Obama Is The Third Bush Term, Part III – The Daschle Obama Drama Distraction

Obama will try to distract Americans from his real intentions again today.

We won’t get distracted. Other websites will get distracted or not fully understand the Obama threat. Some websites which should know better will even make excuses for Obama. We won’t get distracted.

We believe Obama aims to loot Social Security just like George W. Bush wanted to loot Social Security. Evidence for our proposition came yesterday when Obama appointed as Secretary of Commerce a known Social Security privatizer.

President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.

Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H., whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee.

Judd Gregg’s hostility to basic functions of the Commerce Department has alarmed many into opposition.

Some websites, like DailyHowler, have worked hard to expose those that want the destruction of Social Security. DailyHowler exposed Judd Gregg and his schemes to destroy Social Security a long time ago.

While some work hard to preserve Social Security, it is sad to see people who should know better, out of ignorance or misunderstanding, acquiece to schemes -such as means testing – that will destroy Social Security. It is even sadder to see them bemoan the scuttling of the S.S. Daschle.

Obama once again declined to say how he plans to eliminate the growing budget gap, which is projected to narrow somewhat as the economy improves but explode again as the retiring baby boom generation sends the cost of the entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare — skyrocketing. Obama said he will offer “very specific outlines” for addressing short- and long-term deficits when he submits his first budget proposal to Congress next month.

“We are beginning consultations with members of Congress around how we expect to approach the deficit,” Obama said. “We expect that discussion around entitlements will be a part, a central part, of those plans.”

WILL: Exactly. So what you’re doing is you’re making Social Security less and less relevant to a majority of the American people [under the provisions of Bush’s plan]. You’re stigmatizing it, if you will, by means-testing. That’s what this is. They’re now means-testing Social Security so it becomes a poverty program.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have cracked the code. I mean, there is no question about that. The reason the Democrats are so crazed about this is they believe this is dismantling Social Security over the long haul and, you know, you might even see them start to say it. They’re saying it’s turning Social Security into welfare.

WILL: Precisely, because what Democrats have always understood is if you want to help the poor, you attach the poor to a middle class program. You don’t say, “Here’s a program for the poor,” because there’s not gonna be majority support for it.

President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be “a central part” of his administration’s efforts to contain federal spending, signaling for the first time that he would wade into the thorny politics of entitlement programs. [snip]

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, he provided no details of his approach to rein in Social Security and Medicare, which are projected to consume a growing share of government spending as the baby boom generation ages into retirement over the next two decades. But he said he would have more to say about the issue when he unveiled a budget next month.

Should he follow through with a serious effort to cut back the rates of growth of the two programs, he would be opening up a potentially risky battle that neither party has shown much stomach for. The programs have proved almost sacrosanct in political terms, even as they threaten to grow so large as to be unsustainable in the long run. President Bush failed in his effort to overhaul Social Security, and Medicare only grew larger during his administration with the addition of prescription drug coverage for retirees.

At most Social Security needs only minor tweaking. Obama wants to loot Social Security – just like George W. Bush – because that is where the money is.

We get blamed by the Hopium addled for just about everything that goes wrong with their clod. The Hopium addled were angry with us when Uncle Ted’s Caroline nomination drove off the bridge. The Hopium addled call us “Hillary Central” as if that is an insult. We take the epithet “Hillary Central” as a badge of courage and intelligence.

We ended 2008 with an article called Obama’s Year End Circus Big Top. That article was a very brief summary of many articles in which we specifically warned about the Obama Chicago Circus of Crime. Yesterday, DrudgeReport headlined “It’s A Circus: Daschle Out”.

Yesterday’s circus was the Obama and Daschle Drama along with the dying flim-flam “stimulus” scam and the ensuing talk of lobbyists and tax cheats employed by Obama.

We got very confused yesterday when people who should know better wanted to “give Barack credit”. Why? Why give “Barack” credit? Why not give “Barack” grief?

Why does Obama deserve any credit? “Tom made the decision” Obama said. Obama said he himself takes responsibility but then why did Tom, make the decision to quit? Obama did not tell Tom Daschle to quit. Obama supported and backed Tom Daschle to the very end. The only excuse missing from Obama’s repetoire of excuses was “This is not the Tom Daschle I knew.”

Obama knew about Tom Daschle’s tax problems but continued to “absolutely” back Tom Daschle. Remember when Obama knew about Jeremiah Wright saying “God Damn America”? Obama then said he could not cut off Wright in the same way he could not cut off his arm. When Jeremiah Wright insulted Obama, not America, only then did Obama cut Wright off.

“Tom made the decision” Obama said. Is the idea that Obama pushed Daschle out privately while expressing support for him publicly and therefore Obama deserves credit? No, Obama does not deserve credit.

“I consider this a mistake on my part, one that I intend to fix and correct and make sure that we’re not screwing up again,” Obama said. “Ultimately I have to take responsibility for a process that resulted in us not having a (health and human services) secretary at a time when people need relief on their health care costs.

“So this is a mistake — probably not the first one I’m going to be making in this office, but what I’m absolutely committed to doing is fixing it,” he said. [snip]

Obama denied influencing Daschle’s decision to withdraw, which caught a number of senators by surprise Tuesday. Though Daschle caught flak for revelations that he had failed to pay more than $130,000 in taxes, the former Senate majority leader has strong personal ties on Capitol Hill, and several Democrats said they thought he still could have won confirmation.

Obama said the decision was Daschle’s.

“We can’t send a message to the American people that we’ve got two sets of rules — one for prominent people and one for ordinary people,” Obama said, defending his administration’s standards.

Obama clearly said it was a mistake of process and a mistake not to have a secretary of Health and Human Services. But Obama was upset that now the message Americans are hearing is “we’ve got two sets of rules — one for prominent people and one for ordinary people”. Obama regrets people finding out the truth. People like Obama get Rezko to finance their homes, people like Dodd get Countrywide discounts. People like Obama’s friends don’t have to pay taxes and people like Michelle Obama get raises and job promotions when her husband funnels government money to her employers.

Credit? Credit? Obama deserves more questions, not credit. Will Obama remove the lobbyists and tax cheats he has already working for him? It is clear that the only person vetted for high office was and is Hillary Clinton. No one else has been properly vetted. Obama himself can’t answer the questions on the employment form he is audacious in demanding others fill out.

The contradictions appeared in concentrated form Tuesday, in the space of just a few hours.

On Capitol Hill, senators still processing the news that Daschle hadn’t paid nearly $140,000 in taxes learned that Obama’s pick for chief performance officer, Nancy Killefer, was withdrawing her name because she failed to pay less than $1,000 taxes for household help.

At the Justice Department, Eric Holder, who was plucked to serve from one of the city’s influential lobbying and law offices, was being sworn in as attorney general.

And at the White House, Obama stood in the grand foyer to announce his nomination of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) to become commerce secretary, a vacancy created after his first pick, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, withdrew amid a scandal investigation.

The president opened the Gregg event by talking about the need to get the economy going again. He ended it by ignoring a shouted question from a reporter about the tax troubles of his cabinet nominees.

Watching Tom Daschle self-destruct and embarass himself today, fresh on the heels of HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy self-destructing and embarrassing herself just weeks ago, and Bill Richardson doing the same thing himself (with curly fries and barbeque sauce all over his face), it’s just interesting to note what’s happened to some of the people who backstabbed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

It’s almost as if some powerful cosmic force evens things out with these sorts of people in the end (almost as if there’s really a “List”, and agenda-driven operatives are working their way through the destruction of all of them).

Hillbuzz then lists a recap of Hillary backstabbers and Karma backwash. Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Tim Russert, Chiris Matthews, Keith Olberman, “HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy”, Ted Kennedy, John “Are you my daddy?” Edwards, Bill Richardson, John Kerry and Tom Daschle are on the list. Hillbuzz should know that yes, they do speak for everyone in Hillary World-Wide on the defeat of Claire McCaskill.

Meanwhile, also not giving credit to crimelords, the positively wicked people at The Confluence have uncovered these astonishing videos:

Two sets of rules. The liars and hypocrites and crimelords are in charge.

I just had a thought, Maybe Dashcle has been showing Larry Sinclair types round the capital, would explain the need for a limo, hey Maybe Barack borrowed it occasionally or is that just me being evil again.

The press and media are digging their own graves. When you excuse the elite (our elected leaders) from following the law, the little people don’t understand that. When O mentioned two sets of rules, as you pointed out, he excuses himself. An investigation of his past, very well might show some past due taxes. However, the IRS is too busy investigating the little people.

WE NEED A LAW WHICH SAYS ALL CONDIDATES MUST PAY ALL TAXES OWED BEFORE THEY RUN FOR OFFICE.

However, if they investigated where the campaign funds came from, we might find even more money that is suspect. Why are the American people not outraged that McCain will be audited out of existance because he took federal money, and the audit agency says they do not have time and resources to look at the mega bucks that O got. The first to be audited should be O. Or course the press and the media want nothing to do with that. Maybe we would find out exactly how much they invested in O, which is why they are protecting their investment. We could also tell how he is playing favorites when he is out there making deals.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listens as President Barack Obama speaks to the press before a meeting with bipartisan congressional leadership in the White House in Washington.

For all his high-minded talk of bipartisanship and common purpose, Barack Obama has always been aware that Republicans in Congress weren’t going to simply set aside their philosophical differences and embrace the new President’s ambitious agenda. But he had reason to hope that Democrats on Capitol Hill, while not going along with everything, would at least give him a honeymoon period. So it must be a bit of a jolt these days to frequently find himself so out of step with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose tacit support of Obama’s campaign was felt long before her endorsement was made official.

On nearly every major issue — from the auto bailout and the stimulus bill to tax cuts and the delicate question of whether to investigate the Bush Administration officials for crimes related to torture — Pelosi has voiced and even pushed through the House differing positions from the President, at times to the embarrassment of Democrats. They each, of course, have distinct motives, and personalities: Pelosi is a partisan warrior who must tend to her caucus, while Obama got elected as a post-partisan healer, implicitly attacking the old ways of Washington and striving to appeal to a broader national base.

But their differences could have serious consequences. Democrats are enjoying expanded majorities in both congressional chambers as well as control of the White House, but their potential to see much of their agenda passed rests on their ability to get along. Speakers in the past — most notably Democrat Tip O’Neill, whose intraparty bouts with Jimmy Carter were legendary — have squandered similarly powerful perches when they’ve turned on the executive branch. “All marriages have ups and downs, but Obama will ultimately win. He is President with significant political capital,” says James Thurber, founder of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. “And he must build cross-party support, something Pelosi does not excel at.”

Still, even though Obama has an approval rating roughly three times as high as Congress, Pelosi has already shown herself unwilling to quietly execute Obama’s agenda the way former Speaker Denny Hastert did Bush’s. Back then, House Republicans didn’t openly revolt against President Bush until year six of his Administration, bitterly but quietly swallowing early bipartisan programs like the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and No Child Left Behind. By contrast, even before Obama took office, he and Pelosi diverged on bailing out the failing auto companies. Looking to secure as much support as possible for the controversial aid package, Obama did not rule out Republican proposals to use a fund set up in early 2008 to modernize the industry rather than TARP money — a move Pelosi vehemently opposed. Pelosi was forced to swallow a compromise, though that deal died in the Senate and ultimately President Bush used money from the bank bailout to help Detroit.

Pelosi has also been vocal in calling on the President to repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans this year, a move Obama has been unwilling to commit to in the current economic climate; some in the Administration have suggested it’s preferable to just let them lapse next year. And the House Speaker has refused to rule out investigating former Bush Administration officials even after Obama said he’d prefer to keep the focus forward-looking.

But the starkest differences have been over the stimulus plan. In early January, Obama said he’d like to see as much of 40% of the stimulus bill be comprised of tax cuts. Pelosi clearly didn’t agree, ultimately delivering legislation with just a third in tax cuts. When House Republicans objected to two provisions in the bill — one providing Medicaid family planning aid to states, and another funding restoration of the National Mall — Obama quickly asked to have the offending items removed. Around the same time, he traveled to the Hill to reach out to and commiserate with the House GOP.

Sensing the rift, House Republicans have sought to play the two off one another. The message upon leaving their meeting with Obama last week was: “We’d encourage the House leadership to emulate the President in his outreach to our party,” as Rep. Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, said archly. Or, as a House GOP leadership aide said at the time, “If you have an opponent with a 70% approval rating and one with a 20% approval rating, you’re going to go after the one with a 20% approval rating.” In explaining why not a single Republican voted for the stimulus package, the GOP squarely blamed Pelosi for failing to live up to Obama’s bipartisan mantra and writing a bill without any input from the other side.

“Is it your fault in some ways,” pressed a reporter at Pelosi’s weekly press conference last Thursday, “that Barack Obama’s first vote was so partisan and not bipartisan?”

Pelosi snapped back: “I didn’t come here to be partisan. I didn’t come here to be bipartisan. I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest.”

Obama may have the political capital, but Pelosi has no illusions about the way things work on Capitol Hill. “What she realized with Obama coming in was that, yeah, we can go through this dance, but at the end of the day, this was going to be a tutorial for the Obama folks,” a House staffer close to Pelosi told Politico. “They’re all going to vote against you and then come to your cocktail party that night.”

Some of the friction could just be cosmetic to appease both the progressive base and moderates at the same time. “It’s the old routine of bad cop (Pelosi), good cop (Obama); partisanship vs. bipartisanship,” says Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. “It is also a bargaining tool to limit what the Republicans can expect from the legislation in exchange for their support.”

Ultimately, Pelosi and Obama’s relationship is in its early stages, and the first major trial of their marriage is yet to come. But it may come sooner than either would like. “The real test of the Obama-Pelosi relationship will be what Pelosi does if the Senate, as expected, trims the House fat and pumps up the honest stimulus part of the bill,” says Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “It seems to me that Obama is very likely to embrace the Senate approach. Will Pelosi go along with Obama, or join the House liberals in trying to maintain the party’s wish list as a big slice of the stimulus bill?”

The Obama administration backed away from a confrontation with China after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said during confirmation hearings that “President Obama — backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists — believes that China is manipulating its currency.”

China immediately hit back, denying that it manipulated its currency to get an unfair trade advantage. Within days, Vice President Joe Biden said on television: “There’s been no judgment based in the administration that there has been a manipulation.” That word, he explained, “triggers within trade agreements certain responses.”

And President Obama himself telephoned Hu Jintao to give his Chinese counterpart further reassurances.

Ok so he’s backed off and caved with Iran, The EU and China in the space of a week, oh this is going well, The man is as weak willed as a tart at a convention.

Rep. Jim Cooper, a conservative Democrat from Tennessee, told a liberal radio network on Monday that the Obama White House encouraged him to defy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the $819 billion economic stimulus bill.

“Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing,” said Cooper, one of only 11 Democrats to vote against the economic stimulus plan that passed the House last week.

“They know it’s a messy bill and they wanted a clean bill,” he said. “Now, I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill, they just want it to pass and they want it to be unanimous.”

Cooper, whose startling admission came on Liberadio, was one of about 55 House Democrats to sign a letter criticizing Pelosi for suspending debate and committee rules on the fiscal package.

Amid questions about prewar intelligence, the White House is acknowledging that President Bush was incorrect when he said in his State of the Union address that Iraq recently had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.

Meanwhile, President Bush on Tuesday said he takes responsibility for the federal government’s failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina.
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that a key moment in post-war Iraq, the declaration by George Bush that “we have found the weapons of mass destruction”, was based on intelligence known in Washington to be false.

On his last tour to Europe as US President, Bush — who once had only one line for opponents: “You are either with us or against us” — conceded that his “gun-slinging” rhetoric made the world believe he was a “guy really anxious for war”.
Bush said he now wished he had used a different tone on the global stage.
In an exclusive interview to The Times, London, the US President expressed regret at divisions in the international community created by the war in Iraq.
“I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” he said.

“A Gallup survey released Tuesday showed the challenge facing Obama, and suggested that GOP attacks have had an effect. Whereas three-quarters of Americans surveyed said they supported passage of some version of the Obama-backed stimulus plan, only 38% said they thought Congress should pass it “basically as Barack Obama has proposed it.” About the same share, 37%, said it should be passed but only with “major changes.'”

Good morning Hillfriends! Good morning, Admin. Great article! I’ve been reading but not posting – you’re on a roll, Admin! Just received an email from John McCain to sign his petition against the flim-flam-stimulus-scam. I haven’t read all the posts (I’m focused on keeping my job in this economy), so I apologize if this was posted elsewhere. The Senate GOP version of the bill seems very targeted and sensible – I hope it gains traction. Link to sign the petition will be in the next post.
Have a good day!
* * * * * *
Yesterday, the Senate began debate on an economic stimulus package that is intended to get our economy back on track and help Americans who are suffering through these difficult times. Unfortunately, the proposal on the table is big on the giveaways for the special interests and corporate high rollers, yet short on help for ordinary working Americans. I cannot and do not support the package on the table from the Democrats and the Obama Administration. Our country does not need just another spending bill, particularly not one that will load future generations with the burden of massive debt. We need a short term stimulus bill that will directly help people, create jobs, and provide a jolt to our economy.

I believe we need to evaluate every bit of spending in this stimulus proposal with one important criteria – does it really stimulate the economy and help create jobs – if the answer is no, it does not belong in a so-called stimulus package. Furthermore, the stimulus must include significant direct relief to American workers in the form of payroll tax cuts and programs to help homeowners keep their homes. Finally, we need an end game to this stimulus so that when our economy recovers, these spending programs do not remain permanent and saddle our children with a skyrocketing national debt.

I appreciate the discussions President Obama is having with my Republican colleagues, but the time for talking has come to an end and we must now begin some serious negotiation. But as of yet, Republicans have not been given the opportunity to be involved. The House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill without a single Republican supporting it. In the Senate, the Democrat leadership is trying to jam the existing proposal through regardless of reservations from a number of members. With so much at stake, the last thing we need is partisanship driving our attempts to turn the economy around.

I have long been a fighter against wasteful spending in Washington and long an advocate for a balanced budget — that will never change. I realize we face extraordinary challenges with our economy today, but that is not an excuse for more irresponsibly from Washington. I hope you will join me in saying no to this stimulus package as it currently exists by signing this petition.

Why on earth would anyone trust John McCain on the economy? He wants to make Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent. Seems to me there is this huge disconnect among Hill supporters out there. Half seem to think Obama is too liberal. Hahahaha! As if! It’s so reactionary. I don’t understand it. The Repubs don’t give a crap about the regular joe’s pocket book, sadly, Obama’s chicago boy economic advisers don’t really either. But this reactionary stuff from Hill supporters to think Obama is some kind of massive liberal is really sad. Hill was to the left of Obama on every domestic issue in the campaign and she still would be today.

MJ: I think, where McCain is correct, is his dislike for pork and excessive spending. On those issues, I can agree with him. Tax cuts? Not so much. The House version of the stimulus package, does seem to have a lot of pork and spending plans that do not belong in a stimulus plan. Actually, the Repugs are pushing for more relief for homeowners, which is positive. They are providing a balance to the excessive spending of the dims. I do not agree with Repugs on most issues, but wtih some things, they are not the enemy. I don’t think BO is liberal at all. Just looking at his appointments, tells it all. Gregg for Commerce? He sounds terrible.

So Wells Fargo’s reward of top executives has been cancelled in Vegas. They did not do it on their own. The event was found out. Now how much of an IQ does it take to figure out this should have been cancelled months ago. It takes an exposure of some sort to get people to do what is right. Now the hotel is left with expensive rooms too late to rent. So their action really really is stupid, and late, and still hurts America.

Gregg is a conservative Republican as is McCain. It’s so sad to hear democrats call things like Medicaid for the poor “pork”. This stimulus is not nearly enough and it will fail precisely because it won’t be enough. 98k women will lose family planning services in MA this year because of state cuts, that will mean less clinics, less nurses, less local pharmacy sales, less jobs, but John McCain thinks family planning services are “pork”.

mj: i agree with the family planning portion, but do you think it might be part of a different type of appropriation bill? Millions for STD’s, but nothing for family planning? This does not make sense to me. The two are interrelated. Family planning actually would help to stimulate the economy, by providing more jobs at clinics, pharmacies, and would lessen the costs of healthcare in the long run. How expensive is it to society for low-income women to have unwanted babies? The long-term costs are tremendous.

I think there are other things in the bill might be considered “pork.” But family planning is not one of them. If one is going to put STD research into the mix, family planning should be there. Maybe, those items would warrant their own appropriations bill? I don’t know, but if the government is giving aid to medi-caid, family planning needs to be a part of that. BO was a jerk to cave in, to the Repugs on this one.

birdgal, the funding is to cover gaps in state funding. You notice CA is now broke? Now frankly, I would not have framed it as a stimulus. I would have called it what it is, emergency spending for the states. Further, I would have had two bills, one for emergency state spending, a second for long-term, not “jump start” stimulus. However, poor women can not wait for the right appropriations bill. So if the choice is waiting and hoping these things can be appropriated or a christmas tree bill, I’ll take the christmas tree. The problem with the stimulus is not that it’s too big, it’s that it’s too small and doesn’t have any long term goal to really transform the economy, like a national grid, or national light rail system, or both. A repub congressman in FL proposed the light rail idea, that should have been included, it was not.

Admin: there is a perfectly innocent explanation for the bait and switch on the automobile. Given enough time the minions of Big Media will tap their way through to it–but as with your brilliant expose of Obamas nefarious plan to loot social security–a plan favored by belt way elites. I intend to beat them to the punch.

1. Certain facts are in evidence and beyond dispute: that for one brief shining moment which lasted long enough to film a campaign commercial, the illustrioius Tom Daschale did own and operate a 1971 Pontiac which was coated with rust and burned oil (as in pollution).

2. Then, one day it went kaput. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was standing on Connecticut Avenue, with a clear and unobtructed view, it was broad daylight and he was not distracted, so we can rely

3. Testimony under oath:

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran thirty years to a day (250,000 miles)
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay,
I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the Tom Daschale into fits,
Frightening Obamabots out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Nineteen hundred eighty fifty-five.
Honest Tom was then alive, —
Two faced fraud from the SD hive.
That was the year when Frisco-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Mondales army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That Daschale created the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, —
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without, —
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn’t wear out.

But Daschale swore (as Dimocrats do,
With an “I dew vum,” or an “I tell yeou”)
He would build one shay to beat the taown
’N’ the keounty ’n’ all the kentry raoun’;
It should be so built that it couldn’ break daown:
“Fur,” said Daschale, “’tis mighty plain
Thut the weakes’ place mus’ stan’ the strain;
’N’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.”

So the Daschale inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn’t be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,” —
Last of its timber, — they couldn’t sell ’em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he “put her through.”
“There!” said the Daschale, “naow she’ll dew!”

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Daschales bona fides faded away,
Truth and honor — where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on the earthquake-day!

FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, —
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be, — for the Daschles art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, ’Two thousand five
This morning Daschale takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
“Huddup!” said Daschale. — Off went they.
Daschale was working his lobbyist text, —
Had got to money, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the car stood still,
Close to the outskirts of Capitol Hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And Daschale was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet’n-house clock, —
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think Daschale found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Daschale is toast. That’s all I say.
Perhaps now he can register as a lobbyist.

4. Question: praytell what would you do if this happened to you? Let me tell you what honest Tom did. He went to an Enterprise Rent a Car facility and as luck would have it the only thing they had left on the lot was a stretch limosene. He asked for a 1971 Pontiac with rust but for some inexplicable reason they did not have one. So he settled for what they had. (Note: there is no corroborating proof on this but I am sure we can take honest Tom at his word, just like we can on the subject of taxes).

5. Yes, it was a bad day for Honest Tom. On top of everything else he had left his wallet at home. But it so happened he had been out at the Capitol Grill the prior evening with clients and other non lobbyists like him. The credit cards got switched and he just happened to have the clients credit card on him. So he used it to rent the limosene and found a chaeuffer at a labor ready outfit.

6. So you see, there is an innocent explanation for everything after all. Bullshit is bullshit thats all I say to you Honest Tom.

I live in CA, so I know how broke the state is. I am waiting for my I.O.U. Your argument makes sense, but I am not clear on how much of a stimlus we really need. It seems like a hodge podge of many different things, with no clear focus or goal. Maybe, that is what I am having difficulty with.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plunged into her first day of intensive diplomacy yesterday, meeting separately with the foreign ministers of Britain and Germany and receiving a trip report from her Middle East envoy.

Clinton sought to assure European allies that the administration would closely coordinate with them on its emerging efforts to hold direct talks with Iran. She had pointed words about Iranian behavior on the same day that Tehran announced it had successfully sent its first domestically produced satellite into orbit using an Iranian-made long-distance missile.

“President Obama has signaled his intention to support tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, but if Tehran does not comply with United Nations Security Council and IAEA mandates, there must be consequences,” Clinton said with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at her side. She used the abbreviation for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has unsuccessfully sought answers from Iran on its nuclear program.

During the Bush administration, the United States, along with Russian and China, joined a European-led effort to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions — offering a choice of economic incentives or sanctions — but then-President George W. Bush had set strict limits on the nature of the U.S. participation. The six nations demanded that Iran first suspend its nuclear enrichment activities before negotiations could begin, a stance that Iran repeatedly rejected, even as the allies greatly watered down the demands for suspension. The six nations also had trouble reaching agreement on tough sanctions when Iran failed to comply with their demands.

While European officials applauded Obama’s willingness to loosen restraints on American officials talking with Iranian officials, there had been concerns that the United States would abandon the multilateral effort as it pursued its own direct diplomacy. But British Foreign Secretary David Miliband emerged from his meeting with Clinton saying she had made it clear the administration will move carefully and in close coordination with allies.

“The new administration’s approach fits directly with the dual-track strategy that’s been developed,” Miliband told reporters outside the State Department. “It takes it to a new level,” he said, noting that “they have said the hand of friendship is there if Iran is willing to unclench its fist. It is clear the international community is still waiting for Iran to unclench its fist.” But, he stressed, based on his conversation with Clinton, that “there is absolutely no way that this administration intends to circumvent any of the multilateral approaches that have been developed.”

As a first step, Undersecretary of State William J. Burns will meet in Germany today with counterparts of the five other nations, sketching out the administration’s emerging approach to Iran and soliciting ways to integrate it with the multilateral effort. Clinton, discussing Burns’s trip, told reporters, “Iran has an opportunity to step up and become a productive member of the international community.”

Clinton also met with the administration’s Middle East peace envoy, former senator George J. Mitchell, who returned this week from a week-long trip in the region. Clinton announced that Mitchell will return to the Middle East by the end of the month.

“The situation is obviously complex and difficult, and there are no easy or risk-free courses of action,” Mitchell said. “But I’m convinced, after a week there, that my original assessment that with patient, determined and persevering diplomacy, we can help to make a difference and that we can assist those in the region achieve the peace and stability that people on all sides long for.”

The whirlwind of meetings and news conferences comes as Clinton is putting the finishing touches on plans for her first overseas trip, which appears likely to focus on three crucial countries in Asia: Japan, China and South Korea.

Late night chat host David Letterman grills Rod BlagojevichFormer Illinois governor
drew big laughs when he maintained he will be vindicated while being quizzed by host

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009

From the time he walked through the curtain on the US television programme The Late Show yesterday, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was a walking punch line, drawing big laughs when he maintained he will be vindicated and fidgeting under a folksy-yet-savvy grilling from David Letterman.

“I’ve been wanting to be on your show in the worst way for the longest time,” Blagojevich said. “Well, you’re on in the worst way, believe me,” responded a well-prepared Letterman, who went on to ask the famously coiffed politician if he uses “shampoo and conditioner”.

The barbed, lengthy guest spot highlighted another national media tour by Blagojevich, whom the Illinois senate removed from office last week, the first governor in the state’s history to meet that fate. Letterman, as he often is with disgraced celebrities and politicians, was friendly yet utterly relentless. The host repeatedly quizzed Blagojevich about his assertion the impeachment trial didn’t provide him with “due process”.

He also referred to the 13 impeachment counts, saying to Blagojevich, “You’re telling me each one of those was a misunderstanding?” Blagojevich returned to his consistent theme – that when the entire contents of FBI wiretaps were heard, he’d be vindicated. The audience simply laughed at him.

Letterman, who said the more he hears Blagojevich on TV, the more he thinks “Oh, this guy is guilty,” asked if Blagojevich believed he’d be found not guilty in court and that voters would come to think ” ‘he really should still be our governor.’ ”

“Yes, I do believe that, and I believe it will be a historic result,” Blagojevich replied. Unmentioned was the fact the senate conviction also banned Blagojevich from holding state office again.

The former governor also said he is rebuilding after last week’s historic events. “My wife and I will come together, we’ll put our lives back together,” he said. “I will say I never lost an election in Illinois, and so the irony is, I’ve been thrown out of office by lawmakers who didn’t give me a chance to prove my innocence, and I’m not writing myself off as a voice for those same people I fought for.”

Jan–I though this question up last night and nobody responded. So I guess I am asking your opinion on this if you have one. Do you believe the Letterman interview is part and parcel of a premeditated plan to destroy the credibility of the governor so when he connects the dots to obama–if he does then it will be laughed at? Do you further believe that this is an attempt to paint Fitzgerald into a corner if he tries to use him as a cooperating witness? A close friend and I discussed this possibility yesterday. This is the kind of thing big media does of course, but here there were other factors in play, so I do not see it as the single explanation.

Buried in yesterday’s Daschle-mania was a mini-bombshell from Senate Democrats: They simply don’t have the votes to close debate on the stimulus — and may have to do a major rewrite that could rankle the House.

“We’re trying to find a way to reach 60,” Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said yesterday. the Senate’s chief vote counter, told reporters. “A number of Democrats have said they want to see changes to the bill before they can vote for it.”

He added: “I count the votes. I know the reality. We need Republican support to pass this measure.”

“Senate Democrats, who now have 58 of the 100 seats in the Senate, will need at least two Republican votes to avoid procedural roadblocks which could stymie the measure.

“I count the votes. I know the reality. We need Republican support to pass this measure, so we’re trying to find” a balance that will get that support, said Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and assistant majority leader.

A first attempt by Democrats to expand spending on construction projects by an additional $25 billion failed in a test vote after Republicans objected to the cost. The bill already contained $27 billion for highway investments.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who backed the extra money, said she was concerned the Democratic package was “tax-cut heavy and doesn’t do what it should do” to create enough jobs.

His plan would provide cheap, 30-year fixed mortgages, at around 4 percent to homebuyers to help the hard-hit housing sector. It would also cut income tax rates for workers earning up to $67,900, whereas the existing legislation would provide up to $1,000 in tax credits to families.”

President Obama to water down ‘Buy American’ plan after EU trade war threat

The European Union warned the US yesterday against plunging the world into depression by adopting a planned “Buy American” policy, intensifying fears of a trade war.

The EU threatened to retaliate if the US Congress went ahead with sweeping measures in its $800 billion (£554 billion) stimulus plan to restrict spending to American goods and services.

Gordon Brown was caught in the crossfire as John Bruton, the EU Ambassador to Washington, said that “history has shown us” where the closing of markets leads — a clear reference to the Depression of the 1930s, triggered by US protectionist laws.
Related Links

* Not the end of globalisation
Last night Mr Obama gave a strong signal that he would remove the most provocative passages from the Bill.

“I agree that we can’t send a protectionist message,” he said in an interview with Fox TV. “I want to see what kind of language we can work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade.”

February 4th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Jan–I though this question up last night and nobody responded. So I guess I am asking your opinion on this if you have one. Do you believe the Letterman interview is part and parcel of a premeditated plan to destroy the credibility of the governor so when he connects the dots to obama–if he does then it will be laughed at? Do you further believe that this is an attempt to paint Fitzgerald into a corner if he tries to use him as a cooperating witness? A close friend and I discussed this possibility yesterday. This is the kind of thing big media does of course, but here there were other factors in play, so I do not see it as the single explanation.

——————————————–

Woebbi,

I honestly do not know what to think. There is so much paranoia out there…with just cause. But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I mean don’t you think Blago’s advisors would be telling him to stop his media circuit because of the damage it is doing?

It stands to reason that his credibility is slowly eroding and a sublime and complete character assasination is taking place.

If the media can rally around the annoited one just because he takes ownership and apologizes for the Daschle fiasco, then anything is possible. Instead of going up one side and down the other for trying to sneak these idiots into his cabinet in the first place.

Finally, it makes you wonder about Rezko. He is going to spill about Blago but says nothing about obama?

Two senior British judges have expressed their anger and surprise that President Barack Obama’s Government has put pressure on Britain to suppress evidence of torture in US custody.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they had been told that America had threatened to stop co-operating with Britain on intelligence matters if evidence were published suggesting that Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, had been tortured into confessing crimes.

The judges said that lawyers for the Foreign Office & Commonwealth Office had assured them that the threat still held good, even since Mr Obama had come to power and reversed many of his predecessor’s policies on the torture and detention of terror suspects.

In a withering ruling that condemned America for a lack of principles, the judges said: “We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials . . . relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.

“We had no reason . . . to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence-sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.”

The ruling concerns the case of Mr Mohammed — an Ethiopian national who came to Britain as a teenage refugee — who was arrested and taken into US custody in Pakistan in 2002 and who has been held at Guantánamo Bay since September 2004 on suspicion of terrorism.

Mr Mohammed, 31, claims that he was tortured and mistreated into falsely confessing to being involved in an alleged dirty bomb plot — claims that the US denies. However, the charges against him have been withdrawn and no new charges brought gainst him before Mr Obama’s order on January 22 freezing all proceedings against Guantánamo detainees, pending a review.

Mr Mohammed wants reports written by US intelligence officials, which it is understood may back his claims of torture, to be published.

In an initial ruling on his claims in August, the two judges tantalisingly revealed that MI5 had taken part in unlawfully interrogating Mr Mohammed. They ruled that the British Government was under a duty to disclose evidence that it held about Mr Mohammed’s treatment after his detention in Pakistan.

The US Government objected, and they edited out of their ruling any details from reports written by American intelligence officials and supplied to the British courts.

Various media organizations then mounted their own legal challenge to have the US reports made public. Today the judges issued their verdict, declining to publish the US reports, but lashing America for bullying Britain to conceal information that posed no threat to America’s national security.

“Championing the rule of law, not suppressing it, is the cornerstone of a democracy,” the judges wrote.
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The videos posted on Pink today have been posted at Pumas Unleashed. They are generating Hate Mail to the site and Flagged by the Obots to the server.. in the hopes of having them removed!

My suggestion is this… anyone with a blog or website “TURN UP THE HEAT” spread the videos posted at Pink.. FAR AND WIDE! It’s killin’ them!

It’s only a matter of time before their Hero cracks and is unable to function because as MoononPluto said: “HE’S IN OVER HIS HEAD”! The SS Obama is taking on Water! Long Live the Queen, as she shines her light over the world! See her at http://hillaryunleashed.wordpress.com/

Obama’s bank error: it is boards that should determine pay not governments

Barack Obama’s move to cap executive salaries at $500,000 in companies receiving substantial government assistance will not work. It is a populist announcement that is terrible policymaking.

It is boards of directors that set executive compensation. And it is shareholders that appoint directors. What is wrong with corporate governance in America – and therefore why greedy executives are walking off will ill-deserved millions – is that shareholders and directors do not exercise their oversight properly. That is where governments should be directing their efforts.

A top-down approach to compensation has been tried before, and led directly to the huge frauds at companies such as Enron and WorldCom a few years ago.

Mrs. Smith, please be kind. There are few things as sad as watching a twitching Hopium addict at the moment the realization sinks in that the syringe is empty or near empty. It’s a sad sight and we must take pity as we watch them twitch and walk into walls. We are sure MoonOnPluto will also be kind to the twitchers. 🙂

Mrs. Smith, please be kind. There are few things as sad as watching a twitching Hopium addict at the moment the realization sinks in that the syringe is empty or near empty. It’s a sad sight and we must take pity as we watch them twitch and walk into walls. We are sure MoonOnPluto will also be kind to the twitchers.

——————————-

Does that make me a massive bitch or evil, well as far as the bots are concerned, I’m the queen acid bitch from the Alien Trilogy. I think its only fair to dispense back exactly how they treated us for the last 16 months.

February 4th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Mrs. Smith, please be kind. There are few things as sad as watching a twitching Hopium addict at the moment the realization sinks in that the syringe is empty or near empty. It’s a sad sight and we must take pity as we watch them twitch and walk into walls. We are sure MoonOnPluto will also be kind to the twitchers.

I’m being very kind to the hopium addicts. I suggested that Pumas Unleashed edit the nasty comments and ignore the server threats. Lest someone throw a pail of water on the Real Barack Obama and he dissolves into a pile of goo before our very eyes, as all the aliens in Sci-fi movies do! heh!

Obama is going to piss everyone in congress off, he is starting to sound like a dictator. Arrogant prick.

Today : Obama to Lawmakers: Remember Which Ideas Won the Election

Stepping up his pressure on Congress to pass his economic stimulus plan, President Obama reminded lawmakers on Wednesday that he had won the election — and that voters had already rejected old solutions to fixing the economic crisis.

Obama said he was aware of the criticism of his spending package, but said the criticisms were rooted in “the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis in the first place,” including the notion that tax cuts offered the best path to a recovery.

“I reject those theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change,” Obama said. “So I urge members of Congress to act without delay.”

I agree that family planning is very important. Even those who care more about money than anything else should be able to see that if you deny contraceptives now, in nine months the family will be back needing birth services which you cannot deny. And for years after, the unwanted child will be a cost and a social problem.

There is some really strange thinking going on among the religious rightwing. I suspect that these irrational decisions are pandering to those folks.

Why on earth would anyone trust John McCain on the economy? He wants to make Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent. Seems to me there is this huge disconnect among Hill supporters out there. Half seem to think Obama is too liberal. Hahahaha! As if! It’s so reactionary. I don’t understand it. The Repubs don’t give a crap about the regular joe’s pocket book, sadly, Obama’s chicago boy economic advisers don’t really either. But this reactionary stuff from Hill supporters to think Obama is some kind of massive liberal is really sad. Hill was to the left of Obama on every domestic issue in the campaign and she still would be today.

Feisty as ever, mj. Obama’s problem isn’t that he’s too liberal or moderate; he just doesn’t have the courage of his conviction. I just read recently that the promise of ridding the military of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy has been placed on the backburner until the Admin “have to study the implications for national security and enlist more support in Congress before trying to overturn the so-called ”don’t ask, don’t tell” law.” That was one of his campaign pledge.

The man wants to be liked and can’t seem to take risks without worrying about offending. He’ll compromise, back down and even change position so long as it merely satisfies all parties and the bill passes. Once the bill passes, the people will say, “Wow! Obama got the job done!” Obama can say, “This is what you can accomplish if you compromise and hear from all sides.”

But what exactly have you accomplished? If his first month in office is any indication, there will be no bold steps, just a watered down version of what was originally intended so everyone — yet no one — is really pleased.

WASHINGTON — The founders of two nonprofits that figured in the failed cabinet nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle have cultivated ties to an array of prominent Washington figures, even as their businesses were coming under scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service, according to public records, court documents and people familiar with Senate Finance Committee investigation.

Catherine and Wayne Reynolds, founders of education lender EduCap Inc. and a related entity, the Academy of Achievement, have made more than $400,000 in campaign contributions since 1998, federal records show. In recent years they have given heavily, though not exclusively, to Democrats.

The Reynolds couple has invited Washington luminaries on overseas trips and made large donations to nonprofits such as the Supreme Court Historical Society and the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries.

EduCap and the Academy have donated at least $50,000 to the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, a think tank led by Leon Panetta, a onetime chief of staff in the Clinton White House, public IRS filings show. Mr. Panetta is now President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

In addition, Mr. Panetta and Ms. Reynolds were listed as members of the board of Zenith National Insurance Corp. of Woodland Hills, Calif., according to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings. A Zenith representative couldn’t be reached. A White House spokesman said Mr. Panetta has received no compensation from the Reynoldses or their companies. The donations to the Panetta Institute were to support its work, the spokesman said.

In 2005, EduCap paid $416,000 in consulting fees to influential Democratic figure Franklin Raines, former chairman of recently nationalized mortgage firm Fannie Mae, according to a public filing by EduCap. A lawyer and a spokesman for Mr. Raines both declined to comment. EduCap, which markets student loans to families who make too much money to qualify for most federally subsidized loans, grew rapidly in the past decade amid the broader boom in credit. Catherine and Wayne Reynolds received millions of dollars in compensation from EduCap and related entities, according to public tax filings.

Beginning in 2004, the IRS has been investigating EduCap. Among the issues the agency is looking into are whether EduCap used a $28 million Gulfstream IV corporate jet owned by the nonprofit for trips not related to its core mission, according to records in U.S. District Court here. EduCap used this jet to provide trips for Mr. Daschle and other prominent figures. Some of the trips have been reviewed by the IRS, and in a separate investigation by the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Daschle’s decisions to take two trips on the EduCap jet, one to the Bahamas and another to the Middle East, were questioned by the Senate Finance Committee as potentially taxable income in the context of the panel’s broader review of Mr. Daschle’s finances. Mr. Daschle said the trips weren’t taxable, but withdrew his nomination Tuesday before the issue was resolved.

The Senate Finance Committee had planned to release a report on its Daschle investigation that contained details of who took flights on the EduCap jet, aides to the committee said Tuesday. But committee Democrats moved to keep the report under wraps after Mr. Daschle announced he would withdraw his nomination, those people said.

A committee spokeswoman said the panel didn’t release a final report on Mr. Daschle because his withdrawal as a nominee made the report moot. The committee won’t release documents related to its EduCap probe until its review is completed, the spokeswoman said.

The irrelvant stuff is pork to grease the wheels. A congressman gets money to expand a conservation preserve (which is a good thing!). It has nothing to do with the economy (aside from taking soem land out of circulation, raising land values elsewhere a little). It’s just an incntive for the congressman to vote for the whole bill.

Let us keep Hillary out in front of the news 24/7/
While she is off and running to insure world peace meeting with the world diplomats,Mr Obama is spending his time uusing profane terms to describe his total lack of good judgement and sensitivity to be a role model to the young people around the world while his diehard supporters think “He is Cool Man”.The voters should have looked inside the poke before the election.So far his mis-steps are one forward two back in his daily routine.

By ABM90 .State videos of Hillary’s news conferences are very telling about the leading role she has embarked on while Mr.O is in a state of disorientation and he has no paddles.

This administration bar Hillary is fast becoming the disaster we expected. We have a President who has an even bigger ego than Bush did and frankly I think far more dangerous than Bush because in all truthfulness he really scares the helll out of me.

Presidents are often remembered for their words, for their wisdom, and for defining moments during their tenure. Here is a sampling, including our illustrious 44th president.

President Obama, “I screwed up”

George W. Bush, “I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.”

William J. Clinton, “I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives… the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation.”

Ronald Reagan, “We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.”

John F. Kennedy. “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

John Adams, “It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.”

George Washington, “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”

Look, no one is passing a law saying you can’t pay more than $X anywhere in the US. They’re saying these corporate welfare bills (‘bailout’ and ‘stimulus’) won’t give you any money IF you pay more than $X.

Also, HILLARY WON THE EXIT POLLS. 9.5 million of McCain’s votes came from people who would have voted for Hillary if she had been the Dem nominee. She would have beat McCan bigger than Obama did. Obama won by 7%, Hillary would hve won by c. 12%.

And that doesn’t count the Hillary people who stayed home. (It does figure in the Obama people who said they would have stayed home if Obama had not been the nominee.)

Obama is simply lying when he denounces tax cuts being rejected by the American people in November. The facts are that it was OBAMA who favored tax cuts. It was Obama who said his “stimulus” bill would be 40% tax cuts. Obama simply can’t be trusted.

“The legislation Mr. Obama’s team is developing with Congressional Democrats will devote about 40 percent of the cost to tax cuts, including his centerpiece campaign promise to provide credits up to $500 for most workers, costing roughly $150 billion.
[snip]

Although some tax cuts were always expected to be included in Mr. Obama’s economic package, his team disclosed the scope and some details of the plans Sunday at a time when Republicans have begun voicing criticism of what they describe as an open-checkbook approach to spending. By focusing more attention on the tax cuts in the plan, Obama aides hope to frame it as a balanced, pragmatic approach.”

The irrelvant stuff is pork to grease the wheels. A congressman gets money to expand a conservation preserve (which is a good thing!). It has nothing to do with the economy (aside from taking soem land out of circulation, raising land values elsewhere a little). It’s just an incntive for the congressman to vote for the whole bill.

———————————————————————————————–

Heck, if a little grease gets some needed projects and needs met, then it can be a good thing. Just don’t need anymore ‘bridges to nowhere.’ How much is grease vs protein?

February 4th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Jan–I though this question up last night and nobody responded. So I guess I am asking your opinion on this if you have one. Do you believe the Letterman interview is part and parcel of a premeditated plan to destroy the credibility of the governor so when he connects the dots to obama–if he does then it will be laughed at? Do you further believe that this is an attempt to paint Fitzgerald into a corner if he tries to use him as a cooperating witness? A close friend and I discussed this possibility yesterday. This is the kind of thing big media does of course, but here there were other factors in play, so I do not see it as the single explanation.

——————————————–

Woebbi,

I honestly do not know what to think. There is so much paranoia out there…with just cause. But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I mean don’t you think Blago’s advisors would be telling him to stop his media circuit because of the damage it is doing?

It stands to reason that his credibility is slowly eroding and a sublime and complete character assasination is taking place.

If the media can rally around the annoited one just because he takes ownership and apologizes for the Daschle fiasco, then anything is possible. Instead of going up one side and down the other for trying to sneak these idiots into his cabinet in the first place.

Finally, it makes you wonder about Rezko. He is going to spill about Blago but says nothing about obama?

*********************************************

I could be way off base but my instincts tell me that Blago is smart like a Fox…he is out there trying to change public opinion and win over hearts and minds as in touch with the common man…perhaps it is he who is trying to box Fitz, who needed an extra three months to indict, into a corner…I agree the MSM is trying to ‘use’ Blago and make a joke of him…but I think he is beginning to break thru…

…it has been said that he is trying to influence the jury pool…I also think he is sending signals that when he gets his chance he will have alot to say…he didn’t drop O’s name for nothing, or throw in the reference to Rezco for nada…whether he is a crook or not, the guy has charm and the ‘likeability factor’ going for him and he is playing it like a violin…i think he is gaining a certain amount of empathy towards him…

…he is playing the hand he is dealt and I do not think this guy will go down without a full out war to “get his name back”

…and in addition, throw in his repeated auditions with all his media stops for his own TV show and book deal…I would not count him out…

Bill Clinton used to quote Lincoln in defense of triangulation. Clinton used to say that sometimes he goes to the right side of the river, sometimes to the left side of the river. But, Bill Clinton said, his zig-zags still kept the boat going along the river in the direction he wanted.

Obama however, is on a paddleboat gambling ship, going in circles waiting for the highest bidder.

Obama can’t be trusted – that is the problem. Obama can’t be trusted to lead because he doesn’t know where to go. Obama is inexperienced and unqualified.

He is a chi town pol…… he didn’t get to be governor twice elected with out knowing how to play by chicago rules
after all….. Mayer Daley is still just the mayor…… Hot Rod was the Gov!

I believe he knows what he is doing, he very intelligent, and is setting a stage for that is to come

I don’t think his main purpose is to “spoil” the jury pool and gain sympathy support, not that he isn’t bennifiting from that as well but i think his main game is this.

he’s smart to drop HINTS [applying pressure on all those locked doors which hide the skeletons] as to who he will finger if indited (although it is a dangerous game) he needs to apply pressure to those who he could bring down [expose] to put pressure on fitz et all to back off and not indite him in the first place. i think he expects them to protect their own asses and create a story line that will vindicate him and show him to be innocent or else!!

‘SOMEONE SHOULD REMIND THAT ASS WIPE THAT HE ONLY REALLY GOT ABOUT 38% OF THE VOTING POPULATIONS VOTES IN NOVEMBER……’

Approximately 65% of the eleiglibel; voters turned out in november. of that, 65%, about 53% voted for BHO.

That means he was (s)elected with only about 35% of US citizens. Hardly a majority. to those with suspicions that Blago has been set up for the fall . . . . i ported something yesterday from NQ’s touchet speculating that the entire botched past 2 weeks was a set-up . . . i dunno ….i don’t trust anything about BHO.

President Barack Obama is seeking to reassert control over the American political agenda after a series of embarrassing setbacks.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
04 Feb 2009

Barack Obama has been hit by a series of set-back in his presidency Photo: AP
He has admitted “screwing up” key White House appointments and now faces possible defeat in the Senate over his economic stimulus bill.

He was also condemned by High Court judges in Britain after it emerged his administration was standing by a threat to halt intelligence co-operation in a row over the alleged torture of a Guantanamo Bay detainee.

Despite his best efforts, Mr Obama found himself being compared to George W. Bush, viewed among the Washington establishment as the epitome of an out-of-touch president.

During a round of television interviews in the US he said he had made an error in his handling of the Health secretary nomination of Tom Daschle, who was forced to pull out because of unpaid taxes.

Mr Obama has tried to create a contrast with his predecessor who was famously stumped when asked in 2004 what mistakes he’d made. He was eager to admit he’d erred, saying: “I messed up, I screwed up,” Obama told CBS.

“It’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules – you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

He told NBC: “I’m frustrated with myself, with our team. I’m here on television saying I screwed up.” The mea culpa was repeated again and again using almost the same words.

During what turned out to be the worst day of his young presidency just after Mr Daschle had withdrawn after his unconvincing explanations about how he had neglected to pay $128,000 in taxes on a limousine, Mr Obama and his wife Michelle slipped out to visit a school.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” he told a group of excited of seven-year-olds before discussing Batman and reading them a book.”

But the acerbic New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd remarked: “On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading ‘The Pet Goat’ to grade-school kids.

“On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading ‘The Moon Over Star’ to grade-school kids.”

She added that it “took Daschle’s resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn’t have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years”.

Dowd was one of the liberal columnists whom Mr Obama courted before his inauguration and he gave several interviews to her during the campaign.

Dana Milbank, Dowd’s nearest equivalent on the “Washington Post” also made the “Pet Goat” comparison, adding: “If this is Obama’s honeymoon, one shudders to think what a lovers’ quarrel would look like.”

Mr Obama’s wooing of Republicans has also been unsuccessful thus far.

After failing to secure a single Republican vote for the stimulus bill that passed in the House of Representatives, Mr Obama is now struggling to persuade Republicans over the Senate version.

Democratic leaders, who enjoy a 58 to 41 majority in the Senate, have warned him that the $900 billion bill might not pass if it is not stripped of projects that would be unlikely to give a swift boost to the economy.

The withdrawal of Mr Daschle from consideration for the Cabinet post leaves Mr Obama’s plans to overhaul the American health system in disarray. Mr Daschle, a well-connected former Senate Majority Leader, was seen as the ideal man to steer reform through Congress.

There are indications Mr Obama is frustrated with Democrats on Capitol Hill, who Republicans complain are shutting them out.

Congressman Jim Cooper, a conservative Democrat, told a Nashville radio show that he’d received “quiet encouragement” from the White House to vote against the House stimulus bill, which was overseen by Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House.

Yep, Obama’s plan was to: “FAKE IT UNTIL HE MAKES IT!” Hoping the Congressional Democraps would go along with the Plan. Unfortunately, their constituency is screaming Bloody Murder scaring the bejesus out of them, so much so, they don’t know which way to turn. So they stand idle with their thumbs in their mouths until Soros or Axelrod dictates their next move.

The satire out about Pelosi is hilarious.

“In an unexpected move, the Speaker of the House upped the ante on the President’s pay scale rule that private executive pay must not exceed $ 500,000.00 per year.

This afternoon it was announced that executive jets must be powered by alternative energy, in order to fly in the United States. In the House’s pending Community Aviation Investment Act, no aircraft will be permitted to fly unless painted green, certified as emission-free, and serviced by disadvantaged labor. In an interim period, extension cords may be permitted.

“Over ten million politicians lose their credibility every day, and so this legislation cannot be delayed,” a startled Ms. Pelosi blinked. “We cannot allow the Federalists to obstruct this vital work. Wind and solar must be given a chance to revolutionize our travel industries.”

Re capping executive salaries. If I thought Obama was sincere I’d applaud.
Look, no one is passing a law saying you can’t pay more than $X anywhere in the US. They’re saying these corporate welfare bills (’bailout’ and ’stimulus’) won’t give you any money IF you pay more than $X.
Think of it as a ‘means test.’
************
Those CEO fu*cers are crying because the won’t get their tax payer funded $18 billion bonuses; rather than an bonus they need to be getting subpoenas and a day in front of a
Grand Jury.

“This afternoon it was announced that executive jets must be powered by alternative energy, in order to fly in the United States. In the House’s pending Community Aviation Investment Act, no aircraft will be permitted to fly unless painted green, certified as emission-free, and serviced by disadvantaged labor. In an interim period, extension cords may be permitted.”

yes, Obama is unqualified and inexperienced. We do not need this type of problem right now. The country is going down the tubes on a fast tract. We said in the primaries, this office is not one for on the job training. Instead of hitting the ground running, he splatted. Humpty dumpty has fell and his bots can’t get him put back together fast enough.

I meant (minus punctuation errors) to say 53% of the 65% who voted makes BHO’s ‘mandate’ about 35% of the population.

OK. I’ll stop now.
__________________
Yes Basil–at the high water mark of his candidacy he had the support of 1 out of 3 Americans. Wait til he starts tackling real problems and has to deal with the tradeoffs this will require. Big media will stick with him and like for him with reckless abandon, to avoid making the fatal admission that they were wrong about him.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS – News) Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said the bank is keen to avoid restrictions it agreed to after receiving funds from the U.S. government late last year and it is looking to pay the money back as soon as possible.

The investment bank, which received a $10 billion capital injection from the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program in October, is not happy with the strings that came attached to the money.

Compensation restrictions and certain capital requirements were part of the original injection, and extra limitations may be in store after U.S. President Barack Obama imposed tough new rules limiting pay for companies receiving government aid.

“We would like to get out from under that,” Viniar said, adding that the bank aims to pay back the $10 billion this year.

Viniar said Goldman Sachs is also cautious about buying a bank, a move many have urged upon the investment bank to ensure its access to stable deposit funding.

Dashle probably feels like shit today. Bambi saying he “screwed the pooch” in nominating him. Wonder how this is going to go over during the next few months. The dems were in love wish Dashcle and even though he withdrew Barky is throwing him totally under the bus.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The White House is downplaying the significance of the involvement of a former aide to Judd Gregg in a probe into a lobbying scandal.

Gregg was nominated this week by President Barack Obama to be commerce secretary.

According to a person familiar with the case, a former staffer described in court documents is Kevin Koonce, who worked as legislative director in Gregg’s Senate office from 2002-04.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Gregg himself is not a target or subject of any investigation about the employee. Gibbs pointed out that the staffer hasn’t worked for Gregg since 2004.

A former deputy to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff said he plied the person known as “Staffer F” with sports tickets, meals and other gifts, and was given legislative favors in return. The person who said “Staffer F” was Koonce spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is under investigation.

* * * * * *
NMF: I agree – I trust him to separate “stimulus” from “spending appropriations.”
MJ: Sorry, but this is a comment on what will stand a chance of succeeding as stimulus, not on what should be in next year’s budget.

Anything that is not…
* tax cuts for individuals (the ones who actually pay taxes and who will spend) and small businesses that create jobs
* support for housing and mortgage relief (solves underlying problem)
* building infrastructure (creates jobs)
* extension of unemployment benefits

… should be left out of the stimulus package. It’s spending, should be subject to public opinion and should be fully debated in the light of day. Then we can have a productive debate about the spending priorities of the Bush years vs. the Obama days.

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think this was a mistake. I think I screwed up. And, you know, I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.

Notice anything in that exchange? Nowhere is there any talk of right or wrong. In Washington’s culture, unlike the lives of most normal, obviously naive Americans, that’s hardly ever the issue. It’s about what works. It’s all about strategy.

inquiring minds are beginning to ask ‘ just what is Obama taking responsibility for?’

sure, he uses the clever trick of admitting a mistake…what else could he do after Richardson, CK, Geithner, Killefer, appointing lobbyists with waivers to Defense and Treasury…how could he avoid taking responsibility…these were HIS APPOINTMENTS…but what was his mistake that he now claims he takes responsibility for…

Andrew Malcolm explores and tv pundits are also confused…what is Obama saying his mistake is?

George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader tapped by the Obama administration as its special envoy for the Middle East, was chairman of the international law and lobbying firm DLA Piper until the end of 2008. Mitchell, a well known rainmaker for the firm, now holds the title of chairman emeritus of DLA’s global board. The firm has considerable international reach: It boasts a fast-growing Middle East practice with some big government and private clients, plus offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.

Partner William Minor said that Mitchell intends to resign from the firm in several weeks when he begins his new role as envoy. George Salem, a strategic adviser at DLA who helps spearhead much of the Middle East work, said Mitchell was supposed to be part of a DLA Piper delegation to the region that departed today to celebrate the firm’s newest offices in Kuwait and Oman. But Mitchell bowed out because of his new assignment from the president.

Salem said several other heavy hitters (and former government officials) did depart on the trip. Among them were three key members of the Cohen Group, which has a strategic alliance with DLA Piper: Secretary of Defense William Cohen; former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe Joe Ralston; and former ambassador to Morocco Marc Grossman.

DLA has recently represented the Government of Turkey and the Embassy of the UAE in Washington, as well as the executive office of Dubai, one of the leading emirates. According foreign agent registration records on file with the Justice Department, the firm was paid $681,666 by Turkey and $881,691 by the Dubai executive office for the six month period ending August 31, 2008.

They’ve jacked up Credit Card interest to the max 28%. Paying off their loan on the backs of the Middle Class whose money it is in the first place!
********
I got that notice yesterday…How crazy is that..people can’t make payments now so they jack up rates.

has anyone noticed the slow and steady rollout of Michelle Obama…who was going to be Mom-in-chief…suddenly she is giving ‘policy’ speeches, using the word “we” over and over again…yesterday it was education, today she is at HUD…

sneaky suspicion they are priming her for a political career…???after his run???
are they taking another cue from the Clintons???

So I guess energy independence, and I wonder how many americans lose their jobs over this. Payback to his Saudi buddies no doubt.
***********
The Feds need to do what Gov Palin did in AK..tell the oil companies to develop their leases or loose them. The oil conglomerates are sitting on >89 billion barrels of off shore oil. They don’t want to drill and pump it because long term stock price is based on reserves and not “developed” oil holdings.

oh, this is rich…major garrat reporting that the numbers in the current stimulus bill indicate that the cost of creating each new job ranges from – get ready for this – $100,000 – $300,000 to create one job…

so, we end up with, say, a $10-12 hr service type job that cost from $100,000 -$300,000 to create…

OH i hope he pisses them off in congress..that jerk thinks he is a ruler of this country

moononpluto Says:

February 4th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Obama is going to piss everyone in congress off, he is starting to sound like a dictator. Arrogant prick.
I was gonna say this yesterday i notice his looks they really scare me and that one look when biden was at the podium that look that scares me..looks like hitler…dictator.he does it several times when he is on tv .and i have him muted becasue I cant stand uhhs and ummms…I hope he is impeached and thrown out…
hes tired of the white House …and his wife mo Oh i wonder if she is still proud of this country…I douibt it..he is lazy and doesnt want to work for anyone but himself…what a big fraud and liar..to represent America..

February 4th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
has anyone noticed the slow and steady rollout of Michelle Obama…who was going to be Mom-in-chief…suddenly she is giving ‘policy’ speeches, using the word “we” over and over again…yesterday it was education, today she is at HUD…

sneaky suspicion they are priming her for a political career…???after his run???
are they taking another cue from the Clintons???

keep an eye on this….
——————————————————————————————-

Yes, I read about this yesterday. She use the word “we” but said, “we, meaning administration.” She is going to make introductory visits to all the various departments. What did she say on the campaign trail? Not going to get involved in policy? Liar, Liar pants on fire. One could use that line, for the entire administration.

February 4th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
They’ve jacked up Credit Card interest to the max 28%. Paying off their loan on the backs of the Middle Class whose money it is in the first place!
———————————————————————————

I’ve personally wondered if M.O. is agressively pushing for a bigger role on her own. Given her extreme jealousy of Hillary, I would bet that she wants to outdo what Hillary was able to do as first lady.

holdthemaccountable – remember when they recently floated the idea about whether the first lady should receive an income?

i am getting a very wierd vibe about her and her plans for the future…she is a very aggressive person…not someone to stay in any shadows…heck, she even constantly interrupts and dominates O when they are in interviews together…

February 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Hell must have froze over as Maureen Dowd actually wrote an article almost criticizing BO and NOT mentioning the Clintons!!!!
&&&&&&&&

Yes, Obama’s honeymoon period with MoDo lasted just two weeks. For the first time in a long time, I’ll post her swill here, because ya just gotta read this to believe it. Her piece’s title, “Well, That Certainly Didn’t Take Long”, applies not only to how long it took Obama to piss off his liberal base, but also to how short it was before they started waking up from their hopium dreams and getting angry that they were hustled.

&&&&&&

Well, That Certainly Didn’t Take Long
—————————————————

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 3, 2009

On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading “The Pet Goat” to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading “The Moon Over Star” to grade-school kids.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the two-week-old president, with Michelle at his side, explained to students at a public charter school near the White House.

Even as he told the children his favorite superheroes were Batman and Spider-Man, his own dream of being the superhero who swoops in to swiftly save America was going SPLAT!

It just ain’t that easy.

Unlike W. and Dick Cheney, who heroically resisted acknowledging their historically boneheaded mistakes, President Obama summoned a conga line of Anderson, Katie, Brian, Chris and Charlie to the Oval Office to do penance, over and over.

“I think I messed up. I screwed up,” he confessed to Couric.

He told the anchors that the man who helped make him president, Tom Daschle, had made “a serious mistake” by not paying taxes on a car and driver. (It should have been a harbinger of doom when Daschle began sporting those determined-to-be-hip round red glasses.)

Mr. Obama admitted that “ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules. You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

It took Daschle’s resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn’t have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years.

Before he recanted, his hand forced by a cascade of appointees who “forgot” to pay taxes, his reasoning was creeping perilously close to that of the outgoing leaders he denounced in his Inaugural Address: that elitist mentality of “we know best,” we know we’re doing the “right” thing for the country, so we can twist the rules.

Mr. Obama’s errors on the helter-skelter stimulus package were also self-induced. He should put down those Lincoln books and order “Dave” from Netflix.

When Kevin Kline becomes an accidental president, he summons his personal accountant, Murray Blum, to the White House to cut millions in silly programs out of the federal budget so he can give money to the homeless.

“Who does these books?” Blum says with disgust, red-penciling an ad campaign to boost consumers’ confidence in cars they’d already bought. “If I ran my office this way, I’d be out of business.”

Mr. Obama should have taken a red pencil to the $819 billion stimulus bill and slashed all the provisions that looked like caricatures of Democratic drunken-sailor spending.

As Senator Kit Bond, a Republican, put it, there were so many good targets that he felt “like a mosquito in a nudist colony.” He was especially worried about the provision requiring the steel and iron for infrastructure construction to be American-made, and by the time the chastened president talked to Chris Wallace on Fox Tuesday, he agreed that “we can’t send a protectionist message.”

Mr. Obama protested to Brian Williams that the programs denounced as “wasteful” by Republicans “amount to less than 1 percent of the entire package.” All the more reason to cut them and create a lean, clean bill tailored to creating jobs.

The Democratic president has been spending so much time trying — and failing — to win over Republicans that he may not have noticed the disillusionment in his own ranks.

Betrayed by their bankers and leaders, Americans were desperate to trust someone when they made Barack Obama president. His debut has left them skeptical about his willingness to smack down those who would flout his high standards or waste our money.

Companies that have gotten bailouts continue to make a mockery of taxpayers.

Until it came to light Tuesday, Wells Fargo, which received $25 billion in federal funds, was blithely planning a series of “employee recognition outings” to Las Vegas luxury hotels this month.

As ABC reported, Bank of America took its $45 billion in bailout funds and sponsored a five-day carnival outside the Super Bowl stadium, and Morgan Stanley took its $10 billion in bailout money and held a three-day conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach. (Morgan Stanley had also still planned to send top employees to Monte Carlo and the Bahamas, events just canceled.)

The New York Post revealed that Sandy Weill, former chief executive of Citigroup, took a company jet to fly his family for a Christmas holiday to a $12,000-a-night luxury resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico. No matter that the company just got a $50 billion federal bailout and laid off 53,000 worldwide.

The interior of the 18-seat jet, as described by The Post, is posh, with a full bar, fine-wine selection, $13,000 carpets, Baccarat crystal glasses, Cristofle sterling silver flatware and — my personal favorite — pillows made from Hermès scarves.

The companies that have been awarded taxpayers’ money from Congress’s bailout bill spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on federal campaign contributions, Center finds. The return on investment: 258,449 percent.

WASHINGTON–(This release has been corrected to reflect that Bank of America has received $45 billion, not $55 billion, from the TARP program. The $45 billion includes $10 billion that Merrill Lynch received before being acquired by Bank of America. An earlier version of this release incorrectly added Merrill Lynch’s $10 billion to Bank of America’s $45 billion. Adjustments to the figures in the original release are in bold below.) The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country’s economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The companies’ political activities have, in part, yielded them $295.2 billion from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 258,449 percent.

“Even in the best economic times, you won’t find an investment with a greater payoff than what these companies have been getting,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director. “Some of the companies and industries that have received payments may now consider their contributions and lobbying to be the smartest investments they’ve made in years.”

While the Treasury Department, not Congress, doles out TARP funds to specific institutions, congressional lawmakers had to authorize that money in the first place, and lawmakers will determine in the future whether to release more funds to prop up the U.S. economy. During the bill-writing process, members of Congress were able to specify to some extent where the money should go, and they have lobbied regulators to urge them to inject funds into specific banks and financial institutions, including those in lawmakers’ own districts.

“Taxpayers hope their money is being allocated entirely on the merits, but with Congress controlling how much money the Treasury gets to hand out, it will be impossible to completely exclude politics from this process,” Krumholz said.

Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving TARP money are the same members of Congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program. They include Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (he received $854,200 from the companies in the 2008 election cycle, including money to his presidential campaign) and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance Committee (he received $279,000). In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Senate Finance Committee and House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle. President Obama collected at least $4.3 million from employees at these companies for his presidential campaign.

Some, Not All, TARP Recipients Hired Lobbyists

Of the more than 300 companies that have been aided by TARP, 25 paid lobbyists a total of $76.7 million to represent them on Capitol Hill in 2008. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said recently that institutions collecting these funds won’t be allowed to lobby the federal government going forward. In the 4th Quarter of 2008, when Congress was crafting bailout legislation, these companies spent $17.8 million on lobbying–less than what they spent in

The truth is this is going to be like a Buster Keeton silent movie with Mr Obama running red lights, narrowly missing oncoming vehicles, careening around corners and nearly tipping over and Big Media will be standing there at the side of the road admiring the way he handles the wheel of the car.

The only question is who will lose their crediblity first. Put differently, how long can they perpetuate a lie. Two weeks into his Smithsonian Presidency and the bullshit detector is screaming and expelling smoke–or maybe sulphur/

Obama is, sadly, much to blame for giving the Republicans so much leverage. He defined the challenge as biparitsanship not saving the U.S. economy.

What have we seen the last few weeks? Democrats caving to GOP demands and inserting useless tax cut provisions to appease them. Then they vote en masse against the stimulus in the House. Meanwhile, Obama hands yet another cabinet post to yet another Republican, this one a right-wing small-government ideologue who voted to eliminate the Commerce Department he will now head just a few short years ago. Then he gives a schizophrenic acceptance speech where he thanks New Hampshire’s governor for caving to his demands for a GOP replacement for his seat, while at the same time arguing that it’s

even kooky kos is finally admitting that bambi is really BUSH lll LMAO!!!

this from his headlined article today at daily kooks:

During the Bush years, the best interests of our country took a back seat to the GOP’s failed ideology. Right now, it looks like the best interests of our country are taking a back seat to the failed ideology of “bipartisanship”.

NEWSFLAHS .. gibbs just said bambi is going to take a trip before Canada. He’s getting his swimsuit ready I bet LOL

*********

“We were just tired of being in the White House,”
&&&&&&

Give the job to a real president. Hillary as SoS is fourth in line of succession. Obama and Biden can quit to “spend more time with their families”. Pelosi…needs to spend time at a day spa. No need to mention anything about Mr. Byrd.

The New York Post revealed that Sandy Weill, former chief executive of Citigroup, took a company jet to fly his family for a Christmas holiday to a $12,000-a-night luxury resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico. No matter that the company just got a $50 billion federal bailout and laid off 53,000 worldwide.
———————–
He should be jailed for embezzlement.

February 4th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
The New York Post revealed that Sandy Weill, former chief executive of Citigroup, took a company jet to fly his family for a Christmas holiday to a $12,000-a-night luxury resort in San José del Cabo, Mexico.
&&&&

The dear poor man, with such a stressful life, and having to wear stunning expensive suits, and lead a lavish plastic lifestyle. He needs to relax in style, for his health. The jet and resort, it’s not a luxury…it’s a bare necessity.

Why don’t they just give the unemployed and underemployed the money and let them go into business for themselves?

*********************************************

no Basil, they need to control the money so they can distribute it for payback and payoffs in the guise of creating jobs for us…

what I want to know is why we do not hear anything about getting the US companies back in the USA with some incentives and putting the US citizens back to work in US companies in the USA…WTH? do we not have any common sense anymore?

last night I heard one person address something along these lines…it was Lou Dobbs…he is on a rampage against the US Chamber of Commerce that is actively working against the best interests of the US citizens and middle class and our jobs…as Lou Dobbs stated the COC is actively working against us to the benefit of the multinational corporations…screw us

lou had a dem rep on named Lipinsky with a repub rep with an italian name who are trying to push thru protection in the House for American jobs and products, ‘Buy American’ etc and guess who is blocking them…that’s right, our speaker of the house, nancy pelosi…our leaders are in colusion with the multinational corporations…they talk a ‘good middle class’ talk but they have sold us out…the dem leadership cannot be trusted

Chase bought WAMU’s credit card debt. They sent an announcement my 0% CC has expired and would be assuming a change… up to 29.9% in some cases..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# SHV Says:
February 4th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

They’ve jacked up Credit Card interest to the max 28%. Paying off their loan on the backs of the Middle Class whose money it is in the first place!
********
I got that notice yesterday…How crazy is that..people can’t make payments now so they jack up rates.

I worked with a number of arrogant ambitious ruthless incompetent bytches like her during my public school years and it wasn’t fun. Problem is, that old saying ‘the sqeaky wheel gets the grease’ is all too true.

I will never forget her scowling mug during HRC’s convention speech. Classless, clueless and graceless.

She strikes me as the worst kind of bytch – the nasty, arrogant ignorant kind.

Chase bought WAMU’s credit card debt. They sent an announcement my 0% CC has expired and would be assuming a change… up to 29.9% in some cases..

—————————————————————————

Glad I paid off my Chase cards. Suzie Orman has been talking about the credit card companies doing this. Interestingly, I just checked one of my BofA cards, which I am almost finished paying off, and the interest rate went DOWN 2%. I’m not complaining. Just trying to get the cards paid off, before the rates are jacked up.

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Wednesday night to give a tax break of up to $15,000 to homebuyers in hopes of revitalizing the housing industry, a victory for Republicans eager to leave their mark on a mammoth economic stimulus bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s recovery plan.

The tax break was adopted without dissent, and came on a day in which Obama pushed back pointedly against Republican critics of the legislation even as he reached across party lines to consider scaling back spending.

“Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential,” Obama said as Senate Republicans stepped up their criticism of the bill’s spending and pressed for additional tax cuts and relief for homeowners. He warned that failure to act quickly “will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession.”

Democratic leaders have pledged to have legislation ready for Obama’s signature by the end of next week, and they concede privately they will have to accept some spending reductions along the way.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who advanced the homebuyers tax break, said it was intended to help revive the housing industry, which has virtually collapsed in the wake of a credit crisis that began last fall.

The proposal would allow a tax credit of 10 percent of the value of new or existing residences, up to a $15,000 limit. Current law provides for a $7,500 tax break for the purchase of new homes only.

Isakson’s office said the proposal would cost the government an estimated $19 million.

Democrats readily agreed to the proposal, although it may be changed or even deleted as the stimulus measure makes its way through Congress over the next 10 days or so.

Is BHO trying to create a real catastrophe? Is that the friggin objective?

– Cheney warns of new attacks
– 90% of US to freeze tonight
– obama’s energy czar issues dire warnings – no more agriculture in California – I don’t see how they can keep cities going
– town could run out of water by april
– BOA tumbles on nationalization worries
and
obama pushes congress to finish stimulus package and
NOT WORRY OVER DETAILS

dija and s..LOL…blue ribbon for speaking the word we oh we oh we..she is not a speaker either.. poor very poor performance..she needs to watch her kids lol..

they are fruads and Liars..i feellsorry for there children..

Im hope rezko keeps signing and Blago sings like a canary,,
its about time this huffington post and daily koos or whatever they are
wake up because .we are goign down the tubes and he has all these damn people who supported him …brainwashed..by all of his flowery words that is implanted in his brain..by someone else..who is directing him…of what to say ..because he does not have the expierence these proprosals he makes is not his ..i believe it…he does not know how to govern or be a CEO …I hope that BILL does not pass…Obama is the only one who is defending it…he is full of it…this is what dictators do,take the money and run..he might take that money to syria..remember tony rezko is from syria.. or kenya, africa you watch..why does he want it to pass without thinking this thing out thats all we have heard for the last month..well people loosing there jobs people loosing there homes people cant pay billls ..well if we elected these looters into office then get to fixing it and do it right or you are out at election time..
WE need to defend OUR granchildren and Children and qit letting and voting these looters into office..

Secretary of State Clinton seemed to charm State Department employees today in her first town hall meeting as Secretary of State — mixing serious business with some humor. Clinton described the gathering as “the latest of my listening tours,” a reference to her days as a candidate for the Senate in New York.

She answered questions on a range of issues facing the State Department: everything from the role of the new special envoys to how to better fund the the department. But, there were some lighter moments, too — like when she got a question about using science as a tool in public diplomacy.

Then she stopped and asked, “You know I ran for President…?” The audience broke out in laughter. She added, chuckling, “I sometimes totally forget that; it was like a blur it went by so fast.”

She also stirred the pot by cracking a joke about the food in the cafeteria. She announced that starting Friday, State Department employees will be able to submit their ideas and suggestions on an internal Web site, but she pleaded, “I hope that we don’t have most of the suggestions related to the food in the cafeteria.”

Then there was this. A State Department employee came to the mic to let her know about the concerts and talent shows she organizes in the department. She then extended an open invitation to Bill to come play his saxaphone.

The room erupted in laughter and Secretary Clinton told the woman she chose the right member of her family for a talent show.

“If Tehran does not comply with United Nations Security Council and IAEA mandates, there must be consequences,” the U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday after meeting with her German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Clinton was referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog; the agency has slammed Iran for frustrating its inspections.

President Barack Obama has said he favors increased direct contact with Iran, but his advisers have also spoken of intensifying economic sanctions.

How to deal with Iran also came up in a meeting when Clinton discussed how to deal with Iran with her British counterpart, David Miliband.

Iran’s launch this week of a satellite intensified concerns about its suspected nuclear weapons program.

“Iran’s development of a space launch vehicle (SLV) capable of putting a satellite into orbit establishes the technical basis from which Iran could develop long-range ballistic missile systems,” State Department spokesman David Wood said in a release that said the launch triggered “deep concern.”

“Many of the technological building blocks involved in SLVs are the same as those required to develop long-range ballistic missiles.”

William Burns, an undersecretary of state, was meeting Wednesday in New York with counterparts from the major powers dealing with Iran: the United States, Germany, Russia, Britain, France, China and Russia.

great article Jan…boy they should be happy ,they seem really really happy that hillary is there boss..geez louise what oppertunity those state dept employees to Have humor and her smartenss with her talent .. right before your eyes …everyday .I bet i would get real smart at politics or anything I dont understand with her being my boss..Id be jumping for joy..

Domenico Montanaro?
————————
Turndown for some reason I get bad vibes on this guy–but I cannot recall why. I googled him and he looks okay EXCEPT he works for NBC. That has got to be it. No decent media person could work in that environment. Better to be a piano player in a whorehouse.

NBC/MSNBC/CNN are an iron triangle of blind clinton hate, obama love and dishonest journalism. They are very misogynistic. Unlike ABC and CBS they run a 24 hour cycle so they get more attention than they would otherwise.

I resent the above article on the State Department he wrote. You can be sure that people like him are told to look for any sign that she has presidential ambitions or has abandoned them so they can write a story like the one that appears above.

Emjay: if you have a home page which is msnbc, but you never open the propaganda laden articles they post, does the act of simply going to your home page give them a click? I never open their articles and would not want them to get credit by the simple act of going to my home page. If I have to I will change the home page. Do you know?

yep jan I hope they just leave her alone ..but you know hillary she outwits them..with Sense and no nonsense

With little notice, the president and first lady Michelle Obama bolted the gated compound of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine on Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington public school, greeted by children who could not care less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.

“We got out! They let us out!” Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed
***********************
That is so f****** pitiful! Lock the gates and don’t let him back in!

this was on a blog over at fox news..people are getting mad ..tired of bo mo ..

When a great leader like Hillary takes charge of a demoralized army she instills confidence and gives them a sense that they will be part of an important mission.

When a not so great leader takes charge, he defends a bad decision until he cannot defend it anymore, then he says it was a mistake and promises that he will make more of them–mistakes that is as time goes on. Not too inspiring.

Then big media lines up in a congo line (to coin a phrase) and says it is refreshing to see someone who is so inspiring, and–dare we say it–honest.

A combo of a blogger’s comments and the article from the UK Telegraph.

‘You missed it HB. While all this is going on, Barry has plans to reduce our Nuclear arsenal 80% and end defense weapon programs. Check the latest news. He is just leaving us totally open for takeover. This is not a naive thing, it is a purposeful thing to destroy us. Financially we are not crippled but he is making sure to cripple us even further.
God help us. Our economic fate pales to this. It’s now about our very survival
Barack Obama will aim to slash the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the US and Russia by 80 per cent.

CJ-
Talk about ingrates! You can tell, BO has never worked this hard in his life. Never had a summer job…nada!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Birdgal..
—————————————————————————
Glad I paid off my Chase cards. Suzie Orman has been talking about the credit card companies doing this. Interestingly, I just checked one of my BofA cards, which I am almost finished paying off, and the interest rate went DOWN 2%. I’m not complaining. Just trying to get the cards paid off, before the rates are jacked up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A-yup! It’s the only way to beat them. I like Suzie too!

If the vote on the stimulus bill were held in the Senate today — it wouldn’t pass.

So Senate Democratic leaders and the White House are working with a centrist group of Republican and Democratic senators to try to come up with an amendment that addresses the concern that too much of this spending just isn’t stimulus.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has assured the president that he will pass such an amendment and get this bill passed by this weekend.

The president told Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine today that the bill has to be scrubbed.

One thing he did insist, though, is that the stimulus bill be at least $800-billion. Any less than that, he says, will not do what the economy needs right now.

The president is targeting a group of about six Republicans in order to get the bill passed through the senate.

Senate sources say they need at least three additional Republicans to pass this bill by this weekend.

The “stimulus package” is now $900 billion.
It includes:
A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

——————————————————————————–

The “stimulus package” also includes:
• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

My thoughts:
-another country changing agenda item is to promote and pass amnesty for illegal immigrants and essentially making the majority rule the minorities; and the flood gates will be rushed and broken down with all the family members coming here to the land of milk and honey
-Blagojevich is a brilliant tactican; he knows what he is doing and it ain’t going to be pretty; perhaps he is cooperating with Fitzgerald to aid in getting bigger fish to fry? I fear for his life, so SING Blago SING!
-in response to all those who posted re Blagojevich and the media/comics trying to place him in a negative light I say this: one using the other is a two way street and one of those I still trust, Greta, a lawyer herself has said that Blago should have been given a chance to defend himself
-as someone suggested we should spread Hillary and good news about her so I was wondering, does Buzz Up, Subscribe and other such widets cause an article to be more popular? If so that would be a very effective tool for the benefit of the country and to showcase the comparison of her and you know who
-this is not very nice, but I keep having this visual of MO and BO christening every room, nook and cranny in the White House – seeing MO’s face makes me think of this every time
-Hillary, please please please answer the 3am call.

A lot of humor here today. Great article. Good commentary. I appreciate you all.

I know msnbc is poison, but I couldn’t resist posting the cute article about Hillary.

Sorry about that.
————————
Jan- I have been swallowing nitro glycerin tablets, and calling 911 ever since I googled–Montaverdi, Verdi, Verti whatever his name is and discovered who employs him–the general electric aks msnbc.

Then RGB hinted that modo may be having a change of heart on bambi–but for all the wrong reasons. Actually that is not as strange as it seems.

I am no psychiatrist but my read on her is that she has stayed too long at the fair looking for Prince Charming–Bambi being merely the latest iteration on that theme. But Prince Charming never showed up in her life so she has turned bitter and is now Morticia with a serpentine tongue.

Instead of getting her professional help the scumbags at NYT encourage her in these delusions hoping to make a market in it. Are they really any worse than drug dealers?

This doesnt make me feel any better – Obama admin, lobbyist central….and not in a good way.

CIA Nominee Panetta Received $700,000 in Fees

Mr. Panetta also reported receiving a $60,000 “Governmental Advisor Fee” from the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents the shipping industry. The group lobbies the federal government regarding terrorism laws that affect shipping. A spokesman for the association didn’t respond to a request for comment.

(Ahuh, so the nominee for head of the CIA is getting money from shipping industry)

Mr. Panetta also received a $28,000 honorarium from the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that owns companies doing business with national-security agencies of the U.S. government. Carlyle holds a majority stake in the government consulting arm of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., which works for the CIA and other agencies. A Carlyle spokesman said Mr. Panetta was paid to speak at an investor conference and that the matter was unrelated to Booz Allen or any other defense contractors.

(again taking money from this lot makes me prick up my ears)

Fleishman Hillard, a large public affairs and lobbying firm, also paid Mr. Panetta $130,000 in director’s fees. Fleishman vice chairman Paul Johnson said Mr. Panetta advises firm clients on policy and economic issues but performs “absolutely no lobbying or government relations work.”

(yeah right)

The White House’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has earned more than $700,000 in speaking and consulting fees since the beginning of 2008, with some of the payments coming from troubled financial firms and from a firm that invests in contractors for federal national security agencies, according to financial disclosures released Wednesday.

Mr. Panetta received $56,000 from Merrill Lynch & Co. for two speeches and $28,000 for a speech for Wachovia Corp., according to disclosures released ahead of Thursday’s scheduled Senate hearing on Mr. Panetta’s nomination.

Both Merrill and Wachovia reported big losses last year and were acquired by larger firms. The Wachovia honorarium was dated October 30, and the last Merrill Lynch honorarium was dated October 11, according to disclosure forms filed by Mr. Panetta in connection with his nomination. At the time, Bank of America had agreed to a rescue of Merrill Lynch; Wachovia had agreed to be acquired by Wells Fargo & Co.

LMAO……a $10-12 service job costs taxpayers $100-200G? WHATTTTT???? Only in America……..This collosal Far Left Raping of American taxpayers and future generations….should result in permanent Gitmo digs for those who vote for this horses+!# and ROB US OF OUR FREEDOM. Where’s the outrage? What’s next? Lining up miles of VW’s like Hitler did…letting you pick out the color…gray or gray…if this is the Great Society – made up of all us Heinz 57’s…starting to bear out what sociologists have long known about a completely heterogeneous melting pot of mediocrity – the society which is now the USA…leads to robotic, lobotomized idiots who rationalize spending hundreds of thousands for a job that pays less than delivering pizzas. The only exercise these people get is slobbering and drooling all over Obama ….yep, the “Slobbering Love Affair.” Where’s the exit?

CHRIS MATTHEWS: What we have here is a failure to communicate. Let’s play Hardball. Good evening, I’m Chris Matthews. Leading off tonight, I’ll say it again: this failure to communicate, it’s not just the Daschle problem with not paying taxes or the Geithner problem with not paying taxes or the deputy OBM director’s problem with not paying her taxes. Believe me, it’s bigger than that. I’ve never met a political figure more gifted at communication than Barack Obama. Certainly he was in Kennedy’s league and Reagan’s league.

But here’s the difference: you knew what those presidents were doing once in office. You knew Kennedy wanted the Peace Corps; wanted to put a man on the moon, wanted civil rights. You knew Reagan was out there cutting taxes to make government smaller. What’s Barack Obama doing? He keeps talking about his stimulus package like it’s some big Santa’s bag filled with all sorts of sundry items: extended unemployment benefits, “green” jobs, aid to states. But how on earth does this trillion-dollar grab bag work? How does spending this money—all of it borrowed—repeat, all of it borrowed, going to help the country get moving again? That’s my question. And I’m going to keep asking it.

Chris needs a copy of “Letting Go”, “Co-dependent No More” or maybe just joining a twelve-step program for Obama Addicts. There’s certainly millions of them. Like Admin said of addicts who realize the syringe is almost empty – they become disoriented, panicky, dangerous, do crazy things. It’s like they are starting to peek behind the Great Oz’ curtain – and such disallusionment to find that it’s the snake oil salesman! Flim-flam BamBam. Maybe they’ll start clicking their heels at some point and envision plain-Jane black-and-white Kansas (the Clinton years) and start chanting “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…” Then it will be up to us level-headed viewers to finish off the wicked witches – Pelosi, McCaskill, Brazile, not to mention the Bitchells and Koorics in Big Media. Ding dong. Something tells me there’s plenty more fallout to come on Obama’s buddies. Don’t forget the Blago/Rezko duet – led by orchestrator Fitzgerald. The soap opera continues….

While everyone is looking at Tom Daschle’s tax problems…a new issue has arisen concerning another Obama cabinet nomination, that of Rep. Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor.

The Weekly Standard: A seemingly innocuous letter sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives last Thursday by President Obama’s Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis raises serious and troubling legal questions about her nomination and apparent violation of House ethics rules.

“Some top operatives in the labor movement are frustrated with the Obama administration for not giving them the go-ahead to publicly target Republicans who appear to be stalling Solis’ confirmation.” “The anonymous hold on Solis is a clear proxy fight for Employee Free Choice,” said a top operative at a prominent union. “And from the Obama Adminisitration … crickets.”

Obameconomics consists of giving tax reductions and government programs which makes the ignorant think they have more money. But then he turns around and doubles the money supply so the money we have is worth far less. The poor gain, the wealthy gain and the middle class . . . why the middle class loses. This is merely he opening act. Wait until he moves to loot social security.

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

I would like to see pelosi and obama go walkabout and find out what the people are really thinking about the garbage list that keeps growing aka the stimulus plan. They both keep talking about the American people but they don’t have a clue.

I think if the Republicans keep firm on the principles, they might just end up being redeemed…courtesy of the dimocrat blunders that just keep coming…

Here is Mark Ambinders take on Solis. I do agree this is a proxy on the cardcheck recognition provision which labor is pushing. Personally, I am surprised he did not appoint a real heavy weight which Solis most definitely is not. Tom Kokan a MIT or someone of that ilk.
—————————————-
Solis Lingers; Acting Secretary Appointed
Amid threats of a Republican hold on Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis, President Obama has asked a top department official to serve as Acting Labor Secretary until she’s confirmed. Edward Hugler, currently the deputy assistant secretary for administration, has spent more than 30 years in a variety of functions in the department.

Solis’s fate is unclear. Her status as treasurer of the pro-EFCA American Rights at Work (ARW) is what’s causing concern. Republicans shouldn’t really have expected Obama to nominate someone who didn’t support labor’s agenda, including card check, but they’re professed surprise. More legitimately, they point out that ARW was a lobbying for labor, and the position of treasurer includes the moving around of lots of money. It’s not clear where the lines of demarcation are between her ARW duties and Congressional ethics rules, which look askance at members who help to run organizations that lobby Congress. (Solis was not paid for her work, and ARW insists that her role was ceremonial.)

The news of a temporary appointment comes on the day that Labor begins a massive public campaign to pressure Congress to speed up its consideration of EFCA. Several thousand workers will deliver 1.5 million signatures to members today. The aim is to contrast “real grassroots support” with the “fake front groups” set up by corporations to oppose card check, a labor official said. Leading grasstops opposition groups released a poll today purporting to show that most Americans don’t want to join a union.

LOL…maybe we should all get together and develop a “twelve step” plan for the bots and media who are going through so many painful withdrawal symptoms as we speak.
——————————–
There is a methadone clinic near my house. I am sure they would be willing to accomodate the bots and media.

wbboei Says: On a different note, a freind of mine believes cnn andmsnbc have discreditied
Bago to the point that anything he says about bambi will be dismissed as the manunderings of a lunatic. I disagree. What is your opinion turndown?

===================

Cui bono. Would Blago and/or Letterman have motive to protect Obama? I expect you had it right earlier: Blago going for a book deal (and/or an insanity defense), Letterman going for an interesting guest for his show.

So if a bank (who shall remain nameless) decides it would rather give back it’s share of the original bailout because it doesn’t like obama’s new conditions for exec pay, etc… does that mean they didn’t need the money in the first place? Or does it mean they wanted the money in the first place just so they could hike their exec’s pay and frills and no other reason?

On a different note, a freind of mine believes cnn andmsnbc have discreditied
Bago to the point that anything he says about bambi will be dismissed as the manunderings of a lunatic. I disagree. What is your opinion turndown?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blago is a made brother with Obama. Blago and Rezko know with BO they have a Get Out of Jail FREE Card. Blago can stall and appeal for another year or two… before he sees the inside of a cell.. even that is a big “IF”… It’s possible they could seed the jury with friends of Blago…

In an interview Tuesday with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich disclosed that shortly after his arrest on federal corruption charges, leading state senators from Illinois tried to strike a deal with him and sought to buy him off:

BLAGOJEVICH: …Right after our world changed on December the 9th, there were offers made to me by leading state senators, some direct and some through emissaries, that if I stepped aside, they would agree to protect my pay for two years and give me a security detail for two years, but that part of the deal was that I could not pick the United States Senator.

I did not feel comfortable with doing that. I did not want to be a ghost payroll governor. I didn’t want to be bought off, because I didn’t do anything wrong and I did not feel [comfortable] stepping aside was the right thing to do. And when I chose not to do that, I was then told through intermediaries that they would accelerate the impeachment process and throw me out of office…

VAN SUSTEREN: …Who made you those offers?

BLAGOJEVICH: They were purported from the Senate leadership through emissaries close to me. – [Read the full transcript here]

Several questions beg to be asked: Who tried to buy off Rod Blagojevich by offering to protect his pay for two years if he agreed to step down? Where the deal makers [buyers]trying to protect Barack Obama and the reputation of the Democratic Party? Or where they simply trying to protect themselves and their own involvement in a possible pay-to-play scheme? And finally, does this kind of deal – providing two years’ pay to a governor after he steps down from office – conform with the law? It doesn’t seem lawful to me.

I’ve been reading some interesting stuff about how bad Gibbs is a bad press secretary, and how Daschle dropping out is a huge loss for Obama. It’s so obvious Obama’s not ready for prime time, as we’ve known since day 1. He was elected based on rhetoric and a pliant press, and benefited immensely from the unpopularity of Bush.

But now he’s being judged on results, and the WH press corps is a totally different animal than the idiots who covered his campaign. Hillary ran on specific ideas, but that was, you know, so passe. Who needs that when we can have hope and change? We all know that puts food on the table.

Blago is a made brother with Obama. Blago and Rezko know with BO they have a Get Out of Jail FREE Card. Blago can stall and appeal for another year or two… before he sees the inside of a cell.. even that is a big “IF”… It’s possible they could seed the jury with friends of Blago…
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Knowing how talented Robert Gibbs is anyway woudnt you love to see him try to explain that one.

When it comes to traitors Tom Dashale can compete with the best of them. That 1971 pontiac video when he has a chaueffer driven limo, that fine speech about tax cheats only to find out that he is a paradmigmatic example of cheating–the son of a bitch should be hung in effigy. If you ever saw the movie Dirty Harry, then you are apt to recall the actor who played the Zodiac Killer. That actor bore a startling facial resemblance to good old Honest Tom Daschalle.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to reduce the government’s use of private security contractors abroad, in comments Wednesday.

Clinton said a review of the firms’ role was being carried out following a series of scandals over the conduct of contractors like Blackwater, barred from Iraq for its role in a 2007 Baghdad shooting involving its guards, in which 17 civilians were killed.

“I certainly am of the mind that we should, insofar as possible, diminish our reliance on private security contractors”, Clinton said during a gathering at the State Department.

But the former presidential candidate stopped short of calling for an outright ban on the government use of security contractors.

“Whether we can go all the way to banning, under current circumstances, seems unlikely, but we ought to be engaged in a very careful review of where they should and should not be used,” she said.

Clinton said the government had already severed links with Blackwater following the January 29 ban by the Iraqi government.

However another contractor could replace Blackwater in providing security for some 300 employees at the US embassy in Baghdad.

Clinton said reduced troop numbers in Iraq — a key part of President Barack Obama’s campaign platform — would likely mean contractors would still play a role.

“Here is the dilemma and take Iraq as the example. We are going to be withdrawing our troops … How we provide security and safety for those performing civilian functions is a very difficult question,” she said.

Three of Obama’s choices for top jobs have had to stand down in controversial circumstances. That’s hardly the ‘change’ voters had expected

05 February 2009
By Chris Stephen

IDEALISM collided with reality in Washington this week, when Barack Obama’s choice as health secretary, Tom Daschle, became the latest high-profile official to quit the US cabinet before even getting his feet under the table, triggering the unpresidential admission: “I screwed up.”

It was the latest in a growing list of Obama appointees who have been ditched after revealing tainted pasts, and this threatens to undermine the president’s promise to bring “change” to Washington.

Daschle’s offences were two-fold: he was late pADVERTISEMENTaying $128,000 (£90,000) in taxes and he accepted the gift of a driver and limousine from a wealthy private equity fund.

By itself, the scandal would have blown over. But Daschle was not alone.
Hours before he quit, so did Nancy Killefer, Obama’s choice to fill a brand-new government post with an exciting sounding name: chief performance officer – a spending watchdog. She, too, was found to have been late in paying her taxes, in this case $1,000.

The resignations follow the decision of the New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, to decline the job of commerce secretary after he was investigated for links between political contributions and state contracts.

Two more appointees have managed to keep their jobs, despite controversies that now threaten to tarnish their time in office. Eric Holder, appointed last week as the first African American attorney general, got the job despite his role, as deputy attorney general for Bill Clinton, in sorting out a presidential pardon for a fugitive financier, Marc Rich, after Rich’s wife had donated to the Clinton presidential library.

And Tim Geithner was appointed treasury secretary, a post that oversees federal tax collection, despite failing to pay back taxes on a domestic help he hired.

Meanwhile yet more trouble is on the horizon next week when Obama’s choice as deputy defence secretary, William Lynn, goes before Senate confirmation hearings. Lynn has just spent six years as a lobbyist for the defence giant Raytheon, securing $54 billion in contracts, many for the Iraq war: hardly the “change” Obama has promised.

The timing of Daschle’s resignation could hardly have been worse, coming only hours before the president was to appear in back-to-back network television interviews to promote the single most important policy of his administration, the $800 billion stimulus plan.

Instead of talking stimulus, Obama found himself having to issue a long and embarrassing string of mea culpas. “I screwed up,” he told ABC news. “I’m frustrated with myself, with our team,” he told NBC. “So this is a mistake, probably not the first one I’m going to be making in this office,” he admitted to Fox News. “But what I’m absolutely committed to doing is fixing it.”

The root of Obama’s problem lies in his decision, made many months ago, that to get things done in Washington, he needed old hands who knew their way around. He was wary of repeating the mistakes of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who picked outsiders for his government, only to see them flounder as they struggled to learn the ropes.

“You’re not going to appoint the Wichita County schools secretary to be the head of the army,” said Phil Noble, a Democratic Party policy adviser. “You need experience. Everybody you would want to do these jobs has been in the game a long time, and people get caught up in stuff.”

Were he a regular president, this might not matter, but Obama has promised to be more than a regular president. He campaigned last year not simply as a Democrat out to beat a Republican but as the man to bring a “new kind” of politics to Washington. Instead, he risks being labelled, as they say over here, “same old same old”, with a Gallup/USA Today poll this week showing his support down from 83 per cent on inauguration day to just 65 per cent now.

Daschle will be sorely missed by the presidential team. A former Democratic leader in the Senate, he was an early convert to the Obama cause during last year’s primary campaigns, at a time when the smart money – and the smart people – were heading for Hillary Clinton.

As a result, Daschle acolytes pepper the Obama administration, with several already installed in the health department, where he had been expected to spearhead an assault on America’s inefficient private healthcare system.

Obama himself has tried to take it on the chin, telling CNN this week: “Ultimately, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don’t want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.” This does not entirely get him off the hook, because with Daschle and the other controversies, voters have come to question both the president’s morality and his judgment.

His morals are brought into question because he knew of Daschle’s tax problems far in advance, yet saw no reason not to give him a plum cabinet job, until the public outcry made it impossible. And even if his morals had failed him, Obama’s political antenna, so sharp during a near-flawless election campaign, should have told him of the danger of appointing a man who had both tax problems and a taste for accepting limos from investment funds.

But Obama did not see it, and he is now embroiled in a crisis entirely of his own making, eminently avoidable, and perhaps about to get still worse.

Next week will be the hearings on Lynn and his controversial past working for defence contractors, while another Obama nomination – that of Senator Judd Gregg to the post of commerce secretary – is raising fresh eyebrows.
Gregg has a fine and consistent voting record in the senate – but as a Republican. He supports tax cuts for big business and opposes bills to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and lower the cost of prescription drugs for the poor, all issues that put him in opposition to Obama.

So why, critics will wonder, is the president considering appointing him?
Obama himself seems, finally, to have woken up to this personnel crisis, pointing out that the proof of his administration will be in whether he can fix the big things, not staffing controversies. “Do I lose sleep?” he said. “Look, the only measure of my success as president when people look back five years from now, or nine years from now, is going to be, ‘did I get this economy fixed?'” Yes, it will, but these early bloopers have just made that job harder.

He caved in to the Muslims (about respecting them as if they were not before)
He caved in to the Chinese (about currency manipulation)
He caved in to the EU (about “buy American”)
He caved in to the Republicans (where do we start?)

It may be candid but to me this shows an utter lack of seriousness. They still don’t get what this job is all about. It certainly does not inspire confidence
——————————-
PM: the guy is a schmoozer–not a problemsolver.

He caved in to the Muslims (about respecting them as if they were not before)
He caved in to the Chinese (about currency manipulation)
He caved in to the EU (about “buy American”)
He caved in to the Republicans (where do we start?)
———————————————-
He has no values therefore when the going gets tough he has nothing to fall back on. He has a psycological need to please anyone who he cannot control. It is pathetic–and does not bode well for the future of the country in my estimation.

Greta is seriously thinking of shutting the blog at GretaWire down. I just visited and the hatred from bots is like what we encountered with Hillary. Hateful venom. Why can’t they just go to Daily Kooks or Huff n Puff and leave us alone???

So I guess energy independence, and I wonder how many americans lose their jobs over this. Payback to his Saudi buddies no doubt.
***********
The Feds need to do what Gov Palin did in AK..tell the oil companies to develop their leases or loose them. The oil conglomerates are sitting on >89 billion barrels of off shore oil. They don’t want to drill and pump it because long term stock price is based on reserves and not “developed” oil holdings.

=============

Yup. For more details, see an old USA Today article “Palin governs from the center.”

Greta is seriously thinking of shutting the blog at GretaWire down. I just visited and the hatred from bots is like what we encountered with Hillary. Hateful venom. Why can’t they just go to Daily Kooks or Huff n Puff and leave us alone???

wbboei, schmoozing aside, I am more dismayed about the lack of seriousness. Did they think it was all a bed of roses? They are given those perks and privileges and so much more because they said they would deliver and we expect them to deliver for us. He is in over his head. Do you remember in Roman Holiday when she(Hepburn) goes back in the end she gets a good dose of scolding from her chaperon (don’t know the right word) but she fights back saying if it were not for her realizing the seriousness of her position she would not have come back. We don’t have royalty here but that does not mean the job is any less easy or less dignified.

# wbboei Says:
February 4th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
———————————————-
He has no values therefore when the going gets tough he has nothing to fall back on. He has a psycological need to please anyone who he cannot control. It is pathetic–and does not bode well for the future of the country in my estimation.
***********
Exactly right!!!! That is why I have to laugh at people who say that Obama is a Socialist, Communist or whatever…He has no political philosophy other than what is good for “me”.

Obama himself seems, finally, to have woken up to this personnel crisis, pointing out that the proof of his administration will be in whether he can fix the big things, not staffing controversies. “Do I lose sleep?” he said. “Look, the only measure of my success as president when people look back five years from now, or nine years from now, is going to be, ‘did I get this economy fixed?’” Yes, it will, but these early bloopers have just made that job harder.
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What he does not understand is how difficult that is going to be–and how much he will be hated if he does not do it. It is a tough billet, made infinitely more difficult by his lack of experience, his laziness, his lack of values, his intense personal need for approbation and his childlike view of the world. Rest assured eveyone has a dossier on him–meaning Republicans, foreign governments, businessmen etc. As we speak they are identifying his eaknesses and are figuring out a strategy to exploit them for their own benefit not ours. Too many people in this country make the fatal mistake of confusing style with substance.

wbboei, schmoozing aside, I am more dismayed about the lack of seriousness. Did they think it was all a bed of roses? They are given those perks and privileges and so much more because they said they would deliver and we expect them to deliver for us. He is in over his head. Do you remember in Roman Holiday when she(Hepburn) goes back in the end she gets a good dose of scolding from her chaperon (don’t know the right word) but she fights back saying if it were not for her realizing the seriousness of her position she would not have come back. We don’t have royalty here but that does not mean the job is any less easy or less dignified.
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Yup. I agree. He may be less interested in governing than he is in running a 4 year campaign, in which case the country will suffer.

In addition to the twelve step program proposed by humane readers, former Hopium addicts need a half-way house.

Our health care professionals will soon open “Hopey For Dopey House”.

The mission of “Hopey For Dopey House” is the rehabilitation of former Obama supporters to functioning lives in the community. We accept that they will never recover the higher intelligence functioning of a fully enabled brain stem. The goals of “Hopey For Dopey House” are merely to get the former Hopium addicts to learn to wash themselves and use of utensils such as forks and spoons.

Funding for “Hopey For Dopey House” will come from wealthy residents such as Caroline and Ted.

Admin, Thank you for finding that video. It makes me laugh and shake my head every time I see it, because it is so true. The Hopium Addicts are in dire need of Moon’s 12-step program and the “Hopey For Dopey Houses.” Of course, these rehabilitation facilities will have to be hopium-free, and no “Hopey For Dopey” propaganda will be allowed. During the group therapy sessions there will be no “Yes We Can” slogans, and if someone slips one in, that person will need some one-on-one deprograming seesions. The recovery time is long-term, and the prognosis is guarded. Very, very few hopium addicts will recover their senses completely. Learning to wash themselves and use utensils will be considered acceptable progress.

With Princess Caroline’s financial fortune, the funding will be unlimited. Thus, these poor souls will not be a burden on the coffers of the government.

Lawmakers in New Hampshire are telling the federal government to back off because plans for a federal handgun license, “hate crimes” laws to regulate Christians’ speech about their own religious beliefs on homosexuality, President Obama’s youth corps for mandatory public service and the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” to “balance” talk radio
are none of them constitutional.

Such plans by the bureaucrats and administrators in Washington, D.C., are “altogether void” and if mandated, “shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States,” the lawmakers are warning.

The terse alarm is contained in House Concurrent Resolution 6, which has been introduced for debate. It affirms states’ rights “based on Jeffersonian principles.”

It’s not the first such move in the United States. WND reported last year when state representatives in Oklahoma, steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states’ rights, approved Joint House Resolution 1089 on a 92-3 vote to reassert the state’s sovereignty under the 10th Amendment and serve “notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates.”

According to DailyPaul.com, a website assembled in support of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Missouri, Washington and Arizona also have moved in the direction of reasserting states’ rights.

The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,” and also is being cited in the New Hampshire plan.

It states that New Hampshire people “have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto, which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America…”

That means, the resolution states, any “Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of American or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government … and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America.”

It lists as actions that the federal government would be prohibited from doing:

* Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the States comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that State.

* Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

* Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

* Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.

* Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.

* Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition.

New Hampshire Rep. Dan Itse, a sponsor of the resolution, said he wants New Hampshire to be among the states “standing up to the federal government, enforcing the Constitution.”

He called the current status in the United States, with federal rules and regulations reaching into virtually every facet of a state citizen’s life, “a usurpation by the federal judiciary of the people’s right of self-government.”

“What I see happening is a growing disregard for the rights of individuals and the rights of the states. At some point you have to draw the line,” he told WND.

The resolution then, he said, is a warning.

“If you’re in a marriage, and things are going rotten, it’s not right just to all of a sudden hand the other party divorce papers. The right thing to do is say, ‘there’s a problem. Let’s go to counseling.’ This is in essence telling the general government if you continue down this road – you will have nullified the Constitution,” he told WND.

He said New Hampshire lawmakers already have defied the federal government in approving a ban on the Real ID, a government program to stiffen identity procedures.

The New Hampshire resolution points out that New Hampshire was set up as “a free, sovereign and independent body-politic, or State” and when its residents ratified the U.S. Constitution they recommended: “That it be Explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly & particularly Delegated by the aforesaid are reserved to the several States to be, by them Exercised.”

In a direct attack on federal authority the resolution states: “Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

It cites the specific powers given the federal government in the Constitution: to deal with treason, counterfeiting and piracy.

At American Thinker, commentator Larrey Anderson wrote that the plan is pending in the legislature’s State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee, and also is supported by Rep. Paul Ingbretson, Rep. Tim Comerford, and Sen. William Denley.

“Interestingly, the authors of the New Hampshire Resolution took most of the language from the document commonly known as ‘Jefferson and Madison’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798,'” he wrote. “The New Hampshire Resolution boldly defends the state’s (and it citizen’s) rights preserved under the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.”

He noted a concurrent resolution lacks legal authority as a non-binding expression of the intentions of the legislature.

“Nevertheless, these four New Hampshire state legislators have shown much courage by introducing (or reintroducing) these precious principles that have been the bedrock of our republic,” Anderson wrote. “Maybe HCR 6, the shot heard round little old New Hampshire, will inspire more Americans to realize the desperate need to free ourselves from an overreaching federal government. In which case, the shot heard round New Hampshire might become the next shot heard round the world.”

Participants in the site’s forum page said they were sending information on the resolution to lawmakers in Virginia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Michigan and other states. Several other participants said they wished their own lawmakers had such fortitude.

“At least one state gets it,” said one forum participant. “We must free ourselves of that which I firmly believe wants to enslave us, our own government.”

If you cannot afford a mortgage why buy a house/ What did these people think they were doing? And please spare me the stats a bout people who have lost a job. They very well may have lost the job because of the motgage crisis!!!!

sorry turndown still think if you are taking out a HUGE loan to buy a home it is incumbant upon you to read the fine print. I get an unsolicited offer for loan from HSBC in the form of a check all I gotta do is endorse and deposit. Who should i blame when my 5000 loan becomes 10?

And sorry any pork to tell someone to wear a condom go on birth control or not have sex, is a waste. Programs already exist which serve that function. IMHO mor money means more waste and it is not the governments job or province.

The guy President Barack Obama telephoned the other day to congratulate him on his nomination for Iraq ambassador isn’t getting the job. Not only that, but General Anthony Zinni wasn’t even told that the Obama administration had changed its mind.

It’s not often that you get someone unloading like this so publicly but Zinni, a former head of CENTCOM who outspokenly opposed the Iraq war and then backed the surge, is no shrinking violet. This is another indication of a chaotic appointment process – and one of the first signs of fractures and rivalries within the famously tight Team Obama.

Michael Goldfarb wonders if Richard Holbrooke was to blame. Whatever went wrong, this is rank amateurism and a grossly disrespectful way to treat a retired four-star general. Here’s what Zinni told Foreign Policy about how he was “blown off” and career diplomat Christopher Hill got the Baghdad post.

“Jones [Gen James Jones, National Security Adviser] had called me before the inauguration and asked if I would be willing to serve as ambassador to Iraq or in one of the envoy jobs, on the Middle East peace process. I said yes.

“Then two weeks ago, Jones called. We talked to the secretary of state [Hillary Clinton], and everybody would like to offer you the Iraq job.’ I said yes. The president called and congratulated me.”

Then Hillary Clinton met Zinni last Monday night at the State Department with James Steinberg, Deputy Secretary of State, and William Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Williams Burns, also there.

“She thanks me, asked me my views on Iraq,” Zinni recalled. “She said to Burns and Steinberg, ‘We’ve got to move quickly, [Ryan] Crocker is leaving, we’ve got to get someone in there and get the paperwork done and hearings… Lots to do to get ready to go.”

Then, nothing. Zinni’s calls to Burns were not returned. “To make a long story short, I kept getting blown off all week. Meantime, I was rushing to put my personal things in order.

“Finally, nobody was telling me anything. I called Jones Monday several times. I finally got through late in evening. I asked Jones, ‘What’s going on?’ And Jones said, ‘We decided on Chris Hill.’ I said, ‘Really?’ “That was news to me.”

Basically Hillary wanted this guy, Obama decided to shaft him and go with his guy. The turf was begun, Obama doesnt like how Hillary is outshining and is making people pay the price.

“Obama’s not a hypocrite – You’re too hard on him. He was never ready for Day 1 or that 3AM phone call! Stop it. WHAAAA
This is what everyone predicted would happen, but the Hope and Change crowd could only see it raining Skittles and unicorns frolicking on the Potomac.”

Too bad half-way houses rob the system blind.
Gharge 140 per clent for a group session led by someone making 40k a year. Still cheaper than prison but our state govts pass the buck and let non-violent criminals into long term substance abuse programs which are then funded by medicare. And the recidivism rate is nearly100%!!

You have to continue to ask yourself, can he really continue to screw up so badly. However, the next observation is, he never stayed in one job long enough to get over the learning curve. In the Senate, he never even tried to learn the ropes.

So now we have a job he is tied into for 4 years.

I use to work with flash in the pans, who would get the job because they wrote a hell of a resume, but could really do nothing. they always made a point of getting out of the job and moving up quickly before anyone found out they could not do it. When one of them got caught and had to stay, he failed as he really could not do it

Basically Hillary wanted this guy, Obama decided to shaft him and go with his guy. The turf was begun, Obama doesnt like how Hillary is outshining and is making people pay the price.
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If that is the explanation then Obama has made a serious mistake.

The reason I say that is because he is dissing the senior military establishment. And who has he got in that power group. Nobody I know of except that numbskull General McPeak who is a smartass prick who was univerally despised by his troops and not trusted by his fellow officers. Recall he is the one who took a cheap shot at Hillary for the empathy and tears she showed for the plight of a lady who came out to see her.

How can it be that Obama calls to congratulate him and then does a bait and switch? Are we sure this was a swipe at Hillary or is that speculation?

wwboei said General McPeak who is a smartass prick who was univerally despised by his troops and not trusted by his fellow officers. Recall he is the one who took a cheap shot at Hillary for the empathy and tears she showed for the plight of a lady who came out to see her

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If you mean the incident in the diner where Hillary got misty, the lady who spoke to her wasn’t in a plight. The lady was being nice to Hlilary, asking how she keeps going. Hillary misted up about the plight of the country.